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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



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Prejudiced Inquiries 



BEING THE BACK-WOODS LECTURES 
FOR THE YEAR 1884 



BY 



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E. J. MORRIS 




NEW YORK & LONDON 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

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1886 



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COPYRIGHT BY 
E. J. MORRIS 

1886 



Press of 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURES PAGE 

Introduction v 

I. Progress i 

II. Patriotism 18 

III. Party Politics 48 

IV. How to Help the Poor .... 69 
V. Is there any Help for the Rich? . . 84 

VI. Love, Marriage, and Divorce . . . 103 

VII. The Uses of Learning .... 117 

VIII. History 148 

IX. Philosophy 172 

X. Free Thinking ...... 204 

XL Hobbies 238 

XII. Authorship 270 



INTRODUCTION. 



THESE lectures were delivered extempora- 
neously previous to September, 1884. They 
were written out afterwards at the suggestion 
of Dr. Elisha Mulford. He never read any of 
them, however ; and their piecemeal method 
and homely style would not have commended 
themselves to his mind. " I must criticise them 
very severely," he said to me last summer (1885), 
while glancing over those which were already 
written out. In September he was seriously 
indisposed, and his eyesight was failing. " I 
am sorry," he said, " that you did not let me 
take your lectures home with me in the sum- 
mer ; I could have examined them thoroughly 
then." " But it will be much better for you to 
go through them," I replied, " after I have 
done with them. I will send them to you about 
Christmas-time or sooner." He smiled pen- 
sively, and after a moment's thought, answered : 
" I will tell you what to do. When you are 



vi Prejudiced Inquiries, 

ready, send your papers to my friend, . 

He can give you any directions which you may 
require as well as I could." I cared nothing 
about the " papers " or the " directions " then, 
for I realized all at once, what I had not 
dreamt of before, that Dr. Mulford was quietly 
saying good-bye to me, and turning to go the 
way whence he should not return. I know not 
what I said. I only know that I remonstrated 
helplessly, like the rash disciple who rebuked 
his Master saying : " Be it far from thee, Lord ; 
this shall not be unto thee." But my friend 
was not deceived. He died at Cambridge, 
December 9th, aged fifty-one. 

To those who have known him intimately 
the loss would be irreparable if it were really 
possible to lose him at all. But death had no 
power to take him from us. While he lived he 
came nearer and was more unto us than other 
men ; and now being dead, he still lives on and 
is present with us as much as ever. Mere affec- 
tion would, no doubt, with its usual license, say 
something like this, for Dr. Mulford was a man 
very greatly beloved. With him, both in bright 
days of actual intercourse and through long 
years of tried acquaintance, the highest dream 



Introduction. vii 

of friendship could be translated, and for many 
was translated, into actual fact. But he was 
more than a friend. Great as his qualities were, 
they were greatest in that they pointed un- 
ceasingly above and beyond himself ; and he 
abides with us to the end, not chiefly as the 
charming companion and the most tender and 
devoted of friends, though he was all that, but 
as a clear-voiced interpreter of human life, and 
a witness of unusual weight to the truth and 
substance of things not seen. His witness to 
these things was his life, the very ground of all 
his thought, of all his conversation, of all his 
work. He literally lived and moved and had 
his being consciously amidst the great spiritual 
verities of which most of us catch but faint and 
occasional glimpses : and when he spoke of 
divine things, it was as if one heard the sera- 
phim, which stand before the throne crying, 
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which 
was, and is, and is to come ; so strong was 
the impression of reality, of actual vision, of 
undoubting, unmistaking, perfect worship. He 
did not cling to truth nervously and with diffi- 
culty as so many of us do ; he rested and lived 
in it with immovable confidence and gladness ; 



viii Prejudiced Inquiries. 

and the truth he rested in was not any private 
opinion of his own, but the common Christian 
faith. The insertion of the Nicene Creed, with 
the dates, A.D. 381-1881, at the close of his 
work on theology, was not a light or fanciful 
after-thought. He was greatly impressed during 
the preparation of that work by the closeness 
with which his own reflection on the facts of 
experience and the world's history followed 
spontaneously the lines laid down in the great 
creed fifteen hundred years ago. It is true 
that he thought very highly of some writers 
whose thought is often represented as subver- 
sive of the old creed and of the Christian faith. 
But he criticised his most favorite authors 
freely, and took pains to make it understood 
that what he accepted was accepted with a 
distinct Christian interpretation. 

Of Hegel, for instance, he writes, in his arti- 
cle on F. D. Maurice, in Scribners 'Monthly, for 
September, 1872: "I believe that Hegel may 
himself be taken at his word, and instead of 
being a pantheist or panlogist, or whatever the 
last word may be which is invented to define 
his position, he has sought the reconciliation of 
thought with Christian truth and life." But 



Introduction. ix 

Hegel, though to be taken at his word as a 
Christian thinker, is not beyond criticism either 
in his philosophy or in his theology. In the 
same article on Maurice, we read : " The theolo- 
gy of Maurice, more profound than that of 
Hegel, is more consistent also with that which 
is true in the philosophy of Hegel." This atti- 
tude towards Hegel, friendly, candid, deferen- 
tial, yet perfectly independent, is a fair sample 
of Dr. Mulford's admirable bearing towards all 
writers, and, I may add, towards all men, with 
whom he had any thing to do. He looked for 
truth in sincere good faith everywhere, and 
made ample and glad acknowledgments wher- 
ever he found it. The truth he found was 
rarely as full as the truth of which he was 
already in sure possession : but his sympathy 
with all earnest thought in every field of in- 
quiry, and his eager rejoicing in all discovery 
and recognition of actual truth however partial, 
invest his statement of the truth which filled 
and satisfied his own mind with peculiar interest 
and significance. This statement is to be found 
in his published works : — " The Nation : The 
Foundations of Civil Order and Political Life 
in the United States " ; and " The Republic 



x Prejudiced Inquiries. 

of God. An Institute of Theology " ; works 
which for seriousness and sustained elevation of 
thought, as well as for breadth and firmness 
of view and wealth of sympathy with whatso- 
ever things are true and honest, will probably 
remain long unsurpassed in our literature. My 
own indebtedness to them, and especially to 
" The Nation," is very great ; and my indebt- 
edness to happy years of intimate communion 
with the author in the peaceful, beautiful 
" backwoods " is simply inexpressible. The 
lofty faith which nothing moved, the rare 
dignity never lowered for a moment but al- 
ways clothed with humility, the active kindli- 
ness towards all men, the eager spiritual in- 
telligence (" gladly wolde he lerne and gladly 
teche "), the high rejoicing in the truth and in 
all the work of God upon the earth, the all- 
pervading, ever-abiding sense of the divine 
presence in the common life and relations 
of men, and the thousand graces which I be- 
held in him so constantly, denoted a man the 
like of whom one must wonder if he meets 
once in a lifetime, and, having met, one must 
ever desire to be endowed with a double por- 
tion of his spirit. Haec est benedictio qua bene- 



Introduction. 



XI 



dixit Dominus Isaac, ut habitaret ad puteum 
visionis. Intelligentibus grandis est ista benc- 
dictio. Utinam et Dominus mihi donet hanc 
benedictionem, ut habitare merear ad puteum 
visionis. 



PREJUDICED INQUIRIES. 



LECTURE I. 

PROGRESS. 

It is provided that the lectures of this course 
shall be mostly about common things. There- 
fore, in order to make a right start in that 
respect, I have chosen, for the subject of the 
first lecture, what seems to be the commonest 
of all things in our time, namely, Progress. In 
order to stand sufficiently apart from my sub- 
ject to view it from outside, and to talk about 
Progress without the bewildering distraction of 
any effort to be progressive, I shall employ, if 
you will permit me, a wholly antiquated method 
of discussion. I shall attach myself, like a 
Sophist, to the very word, Progress, and allow 
it to carry me whithersoever it will. Such a 
method is entirely untrustworthy, of course, 
but it may prove not altogether unfruitful : 
and, for the validity of my conclusions, if I ar- 



2 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

rive at any, I shall trust much more to your 
assenting common-sense than to the soundness 
of my method. 

First, then, it would seem that Progress is 
movement. This may account for the bitter 
opposition of many people to all Progress. 
Progress is movement, and they have no desire 
to move or to be moved. They now, perhaps, 
occupy the easiest seats in the warmest corners, 
and if they move it must be towards the door ; 
or, perhaps, they are already on the top of the 
hill of power and glory, and any movement 
must be towards the plains and the valleys, 
where luckless men are waging a doubtful battle 
with want and woe. If it be true that His 
Holiness the Pope, and the House of Lords, 
and, in our own country, the millionaires and 
the members of Congress are enemies of Prog- 
ress, the reason, probably, is this very truth, 
that Progress is movement ; for any movement 
would have to be almost miraculously adjusted 
in order to put them in more flattering circum- 
stances, or even to leave them as well off as 
they are. But, apart from all selfish bias, if 
Progress is always movement, must it not some- 
times be an unmixed evil ? Should there not 



Progress. 3 

be some places and conditions where, at least 
for a season, men may say: " It is good for us 
to be here; let us build tabernacles"? If 
Progress be an aimless movement, or aimless so 
far as we can see, why should we admire and 
laud it, or concern ourselves about it at all ? 
On the other hand, if it be a movement with a 
distinct and intelligible aim, a movement tow- 
ard a fixed goal or resting-place, then movement 
is for the sake of rest, — Progress is for the sake 
of something better than itself. When the goal 
is reached the movement should cease ; and if 
it be clear that the goal never can be reached, 
is it not clear also that movement is a mistake, 
and that a wise passiveness, in the grateful 
shade of the nearest beech-tree, is better than 
the endless, hopeless toils of Sisyphus and 
Tantalus ? Or, finally, may not rest, the de- 
sired goal, be approachable, though not quite 
attainable ? And may not Progress be a per- 
petual movement towards rest, that is, towards 
no movement at all ; so that, though all Prog- 
ress be movement, yet the movement must 
grow less and less as the Progress increases ? 
If this brilliant view of the matter be accepted 
the good people who were supposed to dislike 



4 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

Progress, because Progress was movement, will 
have reason to like it exceedingly, because it is 
a movement which tends to retard and abolish 
itself. The Supreme Pontiff and the House of 
Lords will have inducements to place them- 
selves at the head of the Progress of the world, 
and the fiery spirits who live by violent perpet- 
ual motion will be consigned to desperate ob- 
struction as their last hope. 

But we are hobbling ludicrously on one leg, 
leaving several promising limbs untried. Prog- 
ress is not mere movement, but movement 
forward. This restriction may attract some 
who could see no gain or glory in simple move- 
ment. But I fear it will repel more than it will 
attract. If Progress were simply movement, its 
adherents, in spite of speculative and practical 
difficulties, would be innumerable ; and when 
some of them lapsed into momentary rest, the 
others could keep things going. Most people 
like a good deal of movement, but very few 
like to move for any length of time steadily in 
one direction. The majority, perhaps, like to 
flit to and fro, in short, easy flights, at their 
own sweet will, like bees " among fresh dews 
and flowers." Many prefer a more fixed and 



Progress. 5 

limited movement, a rocking, teetering move- 
ment, up and down, back and forth, on some 
happy pivot that forbids all thought of Prog- 
ress. Others, again, scorning such ease, hasten 
eagerly on and on in circles, or in arcs of circles 
to be completed and repeated by later gener- 
ations. 

This circular motion seems to be strongly 
countenanced by Nature herself ; her days and 
years, and many of her other arrangements be- 
ing, apparently, ready-made circles for us to 
move round and round in all our life. More 
closely observed, however, Nature's arrange- 
ments are not strictly circular. The end of the 
day or of the year does not bring things back 
where they were at the beginning. The begin- 
ning and the end are not in the same plane. 
The dreary monotony of moving forward is 
broken by the graceful windings of the appar- 
ent circles ; but there is no turning round and 
round in the same ruts. Nature is earnest and 
tender at once. She humors her children with 
daily and yearly rounds, but expects them, all 
the while, to make an onward advance, as the 
moon is made to go forward along the earth's 
orbit while amusing herself by turning on her 



6 Prejttdiced Inquiries. 

own axis and wheeling round and round the 
earth. Nature's human children, however, are 
very wayward, and they take an ell when she 
gives them an inch. Our fashionable circular 
movements, in Society, in Politics, in Theology, 
and in all things, too often leave out Nature's 
onward advance, and end where they begin ; 
and sometimes they even deviate from the cir- 
cle on the wrong side, like the eventful circum- 
bendibus of Tony Lumpkin, which began at 
the house and ended in the horse-pond at the 
bottom of the garden. 

A curious question arises here, which I must 
hand over, for its full solution, to platforms and 
chairs where profound and impartial thinking 
is done. Progress is movement forward ; which 
way is forward ? As to the movements of 
bodies in space, we can fix upon any direction 
we please — north or south, up the stream or 
down the stream — and call persistent move- 
ment that way movement forward. Is it so 
with regard to the life of mankind ? Is 
human Progress merely a departure from our 
present ground towards new lands in any 
direction whatever? Or must it be in a 
fixed, pre-determined direction, and towards 



Progress. y 

a fore-ordained goal ? If the direction is fixed, 
can it be ascertained and pointed out ? Can 
we look forward along the path and know 
whither we are going ? Or are we to travel 
forward as the bird Merops flies to heaven, tail 
foremost, guided and borne along by some dark 
force which constrains our energies but will 
hold no communion with our minds ? The 
loudest heralds of progress tell us but little dis- 
tinctly of the character of the coming time or 
of the coming man ; and they are growing more 
reticent and mysterious day by day. Some 
time ago we were strongly encouraged to hope 
that we were to be stronger and shrewder ani- 
mals at least ; but of late some of the oracles 
have cast misgiving and ominous conjecture 
even upon this humble point. Are our proph- 
ets and our leaders really in the dark ? And is 
human Progress, with all its " awful ceremony 
and trumpet's sound," a grand, unfailing, unde- 
viating, jubilant rush, nobody knows whither? 
If the line of our advance maybe known, which 
way does it lie ? Are we to go, with joy and 
gladness, towards what our hearts are longing 
for, or are we to be marched in chains towards 
the inane, or even towards that which may 



8 Prejudiced Inquiries. . 

utterly appall us ? Is our progress to be tow- 
ards the good, the desire of all the earth, or only 
towards the barely true, which may, perhaps, be 
more desolate and forlorn than Siberia ? And 
if the true be not as good as we had hoped, if 
our fathers and ourselves have exaggerated the 
dignity and capacity of our nature and the 
glory and preciousness of truth, is it Progress 
to get at the bottom facts and live down to 
them, or is it not moving forward to tread 
on such truth and such nature, and still seek to 
scale the old heavens ? Is not the unavailing 
strife of Prometheus, or of the vulgarest fanatic 
an advance on submission or devotion to truth 
and nature, if truth and nature demand the im- 
molation, and besmear themselves with the 
blood of our noblest life ? Should we not come 
as heroes to our gory bed, if not to glorious 
victory ? This is ranting, screaming blasphemy 
against truth and nature ; but it will prevail 
unless the ways of truth and nature can be 
justified to men. 

While not forgetting that the exact determi- 
nation of the forward path must be left for 
other hands, it cannot be too much for me to 
say that the path forward from the present time 



Progress. 9 

must be a continuation, in a direct line, of the 
path by which our race has advanced to its 
present position. If past gains are sacrificed 
as we go on, our path runs zig-zag if not per- 
sistently backward. I may add that the path 
forward must not lead to a ditch from which it 
cannot emerge, or to a dead wall which it can- 
not pass. It must lie in a direction where there 
is endless room ahead ; otherwise Progress would 
deny itself, and actually limit the advance of 
mankind, as, in fact, some of the varieties of so- 
called Progress undoubtedly do. 

But Progress indicates, not only its own direc- 
tion, but also its manner, and almost its rate of 
advance. It is not only movement forward, but 
movement forward step by step ; and the steps 
are the steps of a man. This is frequently 
lost sight of, and it is assumed continually that 
the more rapidly any one advances the more 
Progress he makes. Nothing could be more 
erroneous. Many people move forward too 
swiftly to make any Progress at all. They find 
themselves suddenly at new and strange points, 
as Philip was found at Azotus ; but the way 
they came they know not. Mysterious move- 
ments have been made, but human steps have 



io Prejudiced Inquiries. 

not been taken. It all has to be done over 
again. In real Progress every step must be 
taken by itself and for its own sake. Progress is 
not only an advance to good things to come, but 
an advance through good things that now are ; 
and none of these should be missed or slighted. 
The far-off end, perhaps, is the main thing ; 
but it is not all. Every step has a separate 
worth and dignity, and is itself an end, as well 
as a step to a remoter end. This, well consid- 
ered, will help to reconcile us to progress. It 
takes the goad of Io from our flesh, and the 
burning marl from under our feet. It gives us 
some stable being in the endless process of be- 
coming, and rescues us from the woful predica- 
ment of those who are always becoming, and 
yet, after all, are not even becoming, but only 
perpetually going to become. 

Do not hurry us too much, then, in Church 
or State, or in the open, common world. Let 
us loiter a little. We know that we have a long 
way to go ; but we know also that we cannot 
make the journey in one day. We can take but 
a single step at a time ; but every step we take 
is a real portion of the long way before us. We 
would not plead for the sluggish immobility 



Progress. 1 1 

that will not advance at all ; but neither will we 
bow down to the clattering idol which makes 
mankind dizzy, and turns the landscape into a 
chronic earthquake, and knows not what it 
wants, or, rather, wants nothing that it comes 
to, but always what is far beyond. 

Finally, stepping forward is a movement for- 
ward of the whole man. The feet do the 
actual stepping, to be sure ; but, if they keep it 
up,' the whole man must go along with them. 
Men may step forward with various gaits and 
postures. Some go with their heads bent 
eagerly forward. Others, stiffly holding back 
their heads, let their feet do the pioneering. In 
a dark room, or in the underwood of a forest, 
the hands go first ; and, in a dense crowd, per- 
haps, the shoulders. But, in all cases, the whole 
man goes at last. So, in human Progress, natu- 
ral diversities of gifts, and necessary division of 
labor, may, in different individuals and commu- 
nities, give the lead to different qualities and 
powers ; but neither diversities of gifts, nor 
division of labor, nor any fashion of the 
hour, should be allowed to tear human nature 
limb from limb, and send a fragment forward, 
and call it Progress. This is very commonly 



1 2 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

done, however, and men are often supposed to 
be making great Progress when only a piece of 
them is in motion, or, perchance, even a piece 
of their surroundings, — their coat-tails, perhaps, 
flapping in the wind before them. 

A man's clothing should, of course, go for- 
ward with him as long as he needs clothing. 
But it sometimes seems as if most of the 
extraordinary movement of the present day 
were in our clothes, — in our environment, 
and not in ourselves. It is well that our 
environment should improve ; that the earth 
should yield her increase, and give up her 
secrets for the service of man. In the olden 
time Nature seemed to deal too penuriously 
with her noblest sons. Abraham, in a tent, or 
on a donkey, was, perhaps, not worthily 
equipped. Julius Caesar possibly deserved bet- 
ter accommodation than his flimsy row-boat 
and his lumbering coach. But now our accom- 
modation puts most of us to shame. What 
worthy use can we make of the subtle and 
mighty machinery at our disposal ? The tent 
and the donkey, the row-boat and the lumber- 
ing coach would be less disproportioned to our 
actual purposes and performances. But the 



Progress. 1 3 

resources of the material world are only begin- 
ning to be revealed ; greater wonders are yet 
to appear, and the earth is to become still more 
emphatically a new earth. One would wish to 
be able to rejoice freely in these marvellous de- 
velopments. But we cannot wish to see our 
own family made ridiculous by their dwelling- 
place and their equipage, and there is some 
danger that it will come to that ; for, unless 
man in the new earth becomes himself a new 
creation, he will be reduced to a mere attendant 
to set forth the wonders of the world, instead 
of being the master of the house, to possess 
and use worthily all that it contains. 

When there is decided movement in the man 
himself, and not in his environment merely, 
still the movement is frequently local or spo- 
radic, and fails to carry the whole man forward. 
Sometimes the advance is in the flesh, and then 
we have high physical culture, which is an 
excellent thing as a basis for something further, 
but which, found alone, turns men and women 
out to pasture with Nebuchadnezzar, and makes 
one long for the appearance of horns and hoofs 
to complete the transformation and to eliminate 
the monstrosity. This imperial degree is seldom 



1 4 Prejudiced Inq^riries. 

reached : but there are plenty of dainty epi- 
cureans and coddling valetudinarians, as well as 
of the robuster horde of athletes who come 
wonderfully near to it. 

With others the advance is in the intellect. 
The intellect is surely noble, and every step in 
advance removes it further from the beast of 
the field. Yet the solitary advance of the in- 
tellect, as well as of the flesh, may deform and 
degrade human nature. Human nature has 
social affections and moral principles and 
spiritual aspirations, and if the intellect absorbs 
all the inner life our nature is dismantled, and 
man becomes a monstrous Polyphemus, with 
his glaring solitary eye as his sole addition to 
his brutish nature, and with his brutish nature 
as all that his prodigious eye can serve. 

Not even the highest life of man, the life of 
the spirit, should be cultivated alone. There 
are eminently spiritual people who are so 
ghostly thin in other ways that we can feelingly 
pray that they may prosper in other respects 
even as their souls prosper. And when we 
look forward to the great future of man, we 
cannot be satisfied without believing, at what- 
ever risk of confusion and extravagance, in the 



Progress. 1 5 

rising of a body by which our natural com- 
munication with the universe may, in some 
way, be maintained. Progress, then, is the 
movement forward of the whole man, not with- 
out much awkwardness and clumsiness perhaps, 
but certainly without dismemberment. 

But the whole man is not the individual man 
only. Unus homo nullus homo. The individ- 
ual is neither the beginning nor the end. We 
are members of a body, of the body, and for 
the body. And the body is very large. We 
all know that it is as large as the family. Every 
one understands that he cannot make real pro- 
gress at the expense of his wife and children ; 
that he must live for them ; that it is better for 
him to creep and take them along than to run 
and leave them behind. There are times when 
we are made to feel that the body is larger 
than the family ; that it includes the neighbor- 
hood and the state ; that no advance of ours is 
secure unless it be the advance of our whole 
people ; that, for the sake of the advance of our 
people, we must sacrifice any apparent interest 
of our own, and find our own real gain in the 
gain of our country. The whole lesson is not 
mastered even then. We must learn that the 



1 6 Prejtidiced Inquiries. 

body is mankind, including the Negroes, and 
the Chinese, and all, and that there is no Pro- 
gress for us without them. The right foot may 
go first; but it cannot go beyond a certain 
fixed point unless the left be allowed and made 
to follow. Mankind is large, and somewhat 
loosely put together ; but it does hang together 
in the end : and, in the long run, it moveth all 
together, if it move at all. The overthrow of 
empires, the breaking up of civilizations, and 
the rejection of chosen peoples are not stupen- 
dous accidents and dire calamities merely. 
Neither are they inevitable necessities of na- 
ture or of unreasoning fate. They are intelli- 
gent and righteous assertions of the fixed de- 
cree that the part without the whole shall not 
be made perfect. They are always ultimately 
in the interest of the masses of the nations, and 
when these are brought up, the old leaders, if 
they will, may be restored, and may resume 
their advance. 

It will hence appear that there is, perhaps, 
more to be done for Progress in the rear than 
in the van ; more by the humble and meek than 
by the bold and brave : and that there may be 
the very best work done for the Progress of a 



Progress. i y 

nation or of the world where there is hardly a 
trace of what are frequently deemed the proper 
signs of Progress ; while, on the other hand, the 
brilliant feats of flying columns may be thrown 
utterly away, because the main body is forgot- 
ten and left too far behind. 

I should have discoursed of a common thing, 
— of the commonest thing of all in our time. 
If the sophistical method which I have followed 
has betrayed me into discoursing of what is not 
at all common, I abjure the method, and shall 
not use it again in this whole course of lectures. 
But if, this time, aught worthy has oozed out 
of sophistry, disdain it not. " Cymer berl o enau 
llyffant." 



LECTURE II. 

PATRIOTISM. 

PATRIOTISM seems to be distinguished above 
most other virtues in that it is, confessedly, a 
virtue of the highest rank and lustre, and yet a 
virtue bearing no reproach among men, but 
universally honored, and thriving under the 
most diverse and opposite conditions. Ancient 
Paganism and modern Christianity are much 
the same to it ; and, among the patriots of 
Christendom, confessors and saints stand side 
by side with men who are violent, and intem- 
perate, and licentious, and profane, and frivo- 
lous in all things except their country's cause. 
While every other virtuous path is narrow and 
steep, Patriotism seems to be a broad road on 
the level of all the world. It may, with good 
reason, be called " the last resource of a scoun- 
drel," seeing that here the scoundrel may be in 
good company, and may do good service, 
though reprobate on every other ground. 

18 



Patriotism. 1 9 

There are those who even think that earnest, 
consistent Christians are less patriotic than 
their more worldly fellow-citizens. Their eyes 
and their thoughts are in eternity, it is said, 
and the whole world that now is they deem a 
mere stepping-stone to the infinite future on 
which they are hasting to embark. They are 
possessed with a love, beside w'hich the most 
sacred earthly affections seem flat and stale, 
and for which they are ever ready to forget 
their own people and their father's house. 
Their faith leads them directly to overlook 
distinctions of race and country, and, in what 
remains to them of worldly life, to merge love 
of country in universal benevolence ; while 
their quickened consciences are so sensitive 
and so imperious that their aims and their 
scruples would block all practical business, if 
they could be brought to interest themselves 
in it. There are, however, in every Christian 
land, plenty of people who have not Christian 
faith or virtue enough to spoil their Patriotism ; 
and perhaps they are reserved in impenitence 
and unbelief for this very purpose, that they 
may be alive to the wants, and patiently de- 
voted to the drudging service, of their country. 



20 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

If it be so, probably this will make matters 
right for them at the last. 

But though Patriotism is a broad road, there 
are probably other things beside Christian 
faith which may hamper our progress in it ; 
and if a thorough sifting took place, the crowd- 
ed ranks of patriots might lose some plausible 
figures. But who is authorized to do the sift- 
ing ? And what effective tests could be ap- 
plied ? In the direst scenes of war, we may 
seek our own ends of ambition and vanity — 
under our country's banner ; and in peace, the 
same sacred symbol may help us to dispel ennui 
and kill time, if not to put money in our 
pockets and to cover ourselves with glory. 
Our country's good nature is boundless, and 
will shield us in any amount of illusory swag- 
gering. Lest we should owe our sweet sense 
of Patriotic zeal and loyalty to this indulgent, 
but unflattering tenderness of our great Mother, 
we must search ourselves sharply ; but before 
we can do so, we must know what we are talk- 
ing about. 

What is Patriotism, then? It is easy to reply 
that patriotism is the love of one's country. 
But where and what is our country that we 



Patriotism. 2 1 

may love it ? Is it the land in which we live 
that we are to love ? And must we love all of 
it, and spread out our affections over the great 
prairies, and the Rocky Mountains, and Texas, 
and all? If not, how much of the land must we 
love ? Will it do to love only our own little 
homesteads, and let the whole population, by 
combined affection, make up a complete love 
of the country, — that is, of the settled parts of 
the country, leaving the unclaimed wastes to 
wait for love until they are brought under cul- 
tivation? But if every Patriot must love the 
whole land, must he know it before he loves 
it ? Or can he love it just as well without know- 
ing any thing about it ? If the lover must know 
the beloved, what a pilgrimage awaits those 
who would be American Patriots ! They must 
start out early, and they must not salute any 
one by the way. They must not rest, summer 
or winter, and they must not grow listless and 
sleepy on their journey. They must resolutely 
love every place they come to ; and they must 
not dismiss the day's love when the day is over, 
but carry every acquisition forward to make up 
the grand whole. Thus, for homeless, useless 
vagabonds, Patriotism may perhaps be possible 



2 2 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

for a brief, brief season at the weary close of 
life ; but the tillers of the soil, and other indus- 
trious citizens, whom we have been accustomed 
to regard as the heart and core of our popula- 
tion, can never hope to love their country at all. 
If, aghast at this prospect, we decide that 
the land may be loved unexplored and un- 
known, what kind of love can that be ? It 
surely cannot be love of the land for its own 
sake. It must be love trickling down, from 
some more direct object, to the land as con- 
nected with that object, like the precious oint- 
ment upon the head, that ran down upon the 
beard, — that went down to the skirts of the 
garments. The land, then, is not the country 
we love : the land is loved for the country's 
sake. The land may be, to a great extent, 
unknown ; but we can illumine its unknown 
regions with the familiar glory of the country. 
Any known and happy features of the land are 
freely mingled with the renown of the country, 
as in the exuberant lines, — 

' ' This royal throne of kings, this sceptr'd isle, 
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
This other Eden, demi-paradise ; 
This fortress, built by Nature for herself, 



Patriotism. 2 3 

Against infection, and the hand of war ; 
This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea, 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England ! " 

But happy features in the land are not at all 
requisite. All natural features can be glorified 
alike. The precious ointment will go down to 
the skirts of the garments, irrespective of their 
stuff or their style. A land of vines, and fig- 
trees, and pomegranates, or a land of brown 
heath ; the grateful shelter of deep valleys, and 
the smile of flowery dales ; or the naked cliffs 
that lift you to the storm ; — it is all one : you 
love the land, whatsoever it be, for the sake of 
the dear love you bear your country. 

But what is the country ? Is it the People, 
— Americans born in the land, and immigrants 
of all tribes and tongues, as soon as they re- 
ceive their naturalization papers ? It is clear 
that for these unknown myriads, for their own 
sake, we can have no other love than the good- 
will which we owe to all men. And if the 
people were the country, there would be a 
distinct country for every generation to love. 
We could not love the country which Wash- 



24 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

ington loved, or the country which another 
Washington may love in the fortieth century. 
Furthermore, there are a few American citizens, 
of our own time, whom we know very well, but 
whom we cannot love or honor for their own 
sake. •They have an indefeasible claim to our 
indignation and scorn. There are others, of 
whom we cannot speak so harshly, but whom, 
nevertheless, we should be willing to see bar- 
tered for average Hottentots, at the rate of 
more than a dozen of our countrymen for one 
African. Is this treason ? Are these men in- 
tegral portions of the country which demands 
our highest love and devotion ? And is our 
love for our country, demand what you will, 
practically to depend on the character of our 
countrymen ? The character of our country- 
men is high and low, without limit. Are we to 
attribute all to our country, and clothe her in 
motley, and love or hate, revere or pity, accord- 
ing to the spot we happen to look on? Or 
must we ascertain the character of the majority, 
or the average character, and govern our vari- 
able patriotism by the rise and fall of that ? 
Patriotism will scarcely be possible on such 
terms ; and the terms need only to be stated 



Patriotism. 2 5 

in order to be repudiated. As our hearts re- 
fuse to think of our country as mere territory, 
straggling over hill and dale for three thousand 
miles, and patched here and there from time to 
time ; as they refuse to think of it as being 
born and buried piecemeal, from generation to 
generation ; as they insist that our country is 
one, whether the States be thirteen or fifty, and 
whether the people be five or fifty millions ; 
that it is one for the fathers and for us all and 
for those who shall come after us ; so they in- 
sist, with equal emphasis, that our country, 
being one, has character, a character not to 
be compromised by the baseness of unworthy 
citizens, on the one hand, and on the other, 
not to be measured by the excellence of the 
very noblest. Our country was before us ; and 
her character is the law and guide of ours, not 
its result. The fervid maxim, " My country, 
right or wrong," is over-officious, and steers 
straight for chaos. Our country is right, and 
not wrong. Whatever is wrong has neither part 
nor lot with her, but is arrayed with the fatal 
powers with which she must ever battle. Deny 
this, and patriotism is discrowned, and becomes 
a babbling and savage idiot : admit it, and all 



2 6 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

love and service and sacrifice are our coun- 
try's due. She will rejoice with us and bless 
us if we loyally render them unto her : and if 
her children forsake her, to follow their abom- 
inations, she may sit on the ground, and mourn 
for them, in darkness and desolation ; but her 
purity is not sullied, and her great hope re- 
mains sure. Through her tears she looks forth 
for the coming day. 

But let us pause, and consider whether this 
rhapsodical argument has not left us without 
a country at all. Our country is not the land, 
— not all the people, — and not choice spirits 
among the people. Is it a shadow, then ? Is 
it a glorious, gracious phantom, or only a won- 
der-working name ? Shall we love, and honor, 
and live and die for an inflated figure of speech ? 
Suppose it is proved that Patriotism is not rea- 
sonable or possible if our country be no other 
than the land, or the population ; why may we 
not accept the conclusion, and give it full 
sweep, and say that Patriotism, with its pos- 
ing, and its preaching, and all its hysterics, is 
not reasonable at all ; and that the proper thing 
for all men to do is to live, in general, as serene 
citizens of the world, and, when their interests 



Patriotism. 2 7 

are menaced, to make the best temporary com- 
binations they can, and bargain or fight their 
cause through, and say as little about it as 
possible ? 

This may be the proper and reasonable thing 
to do : but it is doubtful whether it has ever 
been fairly tried, or ever will be. Men are 
rolled up, or pounded together, into patriotic 
nations, before they know it, and without be- 
ing consulted. Nations are not born of the 
will of man. They are made in secret, and 
forced to the birth with infinite travail. And 
as their unity is originated, so it is maintained, 
less by their voluntary adhesion than by an 
inner, deeper life, " whose fountain who shall 
tell?" We have found this true in our own 
country ; and we have another familiar and 
most impressive instance of it in the making 
and preserving of England. Early English his- 
tory has been described as mere battles of kites 
and crows. But those very kites and crows 
were already under a law which made them, 
in their bloodiest conflicts, the founders of a 
great united kingdom. Saxon and Norman 
and Dane, while seeking separate, selfish ends, 
fought for the common country that was to be. 



28 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

Scotland and Wales were long irreconcilable. 
But all their brave resistance was but the will 
of man setting itself against his deeper life. 
Their true country, though they could not 
then perceive it, was the country which they 
cursed night and day, and against which they 
struggled and plotted for centuries. At last, 
the yoke of England is not needed on their 
necks, because the conquering life of England 
is supreme in their hearts. England's past, 
they know not how, has become their own ; 
and England's future is their birthright. They 
still love their mountain homes, and they cher- 
ish the memory of their fathers ; they have 
local and provincial aims, of course, which they 
will seek persistently : but the Celts and Teu- 
tons of Britain have nevertheless become one 
people, loving and serving one common coun- 
try. Of the Celts of Ireland, history is not yet 
ready to speak definitely. They certainly are 
much to England, many of them being among 
her foremost sons, in war and peace, all over 
the empire. To take away all that is Irish from 
England would be more than cutting off the 
right hand or plucking out the right eye. Eng- 
land also certainly is, and must continue to be, 



Patriotism. 29 

in many ways, very much to Ireland. But 
large numbers of the Irish people of to-day 
are as hostile to the English connection, and 
as determined to get rid of it, as the followers 
of Wallace and Bruce and Llewelyn ever were. 
It is vain to conjecture now what the end of 
their struggle may be. Ireland may gain her 
independence, and found a strong state, or even 
a great empire of her own. But there are wise 
historians who would consider such a thing 
impossible without a complete change in the 
Celtic nature. 

The following, from Mommsen (" Rome," Bk. 
II., Chap, iv.), will give some of the grounds of 
their judgment : " With various solid qualities 
and still more that were brilliant, it (the Celtic 
race) was deficient in those deeper moral and 
political qualifications which lie at the root of 
all that is good and great in human develop- 
ment. . . . Their political constitution was 
imperfect. Not only was the national unity 
recognized but feebly as a bond of connec- 
tion — as is, in fact, the case with all nations 
at first, — but the individual communities were 
deficient in unanimity and steady control, in 
earnest public spirit and consistency of aim. 



30 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

The only organization for which they were 
fitted was a military one, where the bonds of 
discipline relieved the individual from the 
troublesome task of self-control. ' The promi- 
nent qualities of the Celtic race,' says their 
historian Thierry ' were personal bravery, in 
which they excelled all nations ; an open, im- 
petuous temperament, accessible to every im- 
pression ; much intelligence, but at the same 
time an extreme volatility, want of persever- 
ance, aversion to discipline and order, ostenta- 
tion and perpetual discord — the result of bound- 
less vanity.' Cato the Elder more briefly de- 
scribes them, nearly to the same effect : ' The 
Celts devote themselves mainly to two things — 
fighting and esprit ' {rem militarem et argute 
loqui). Such qualities — those of good soldiers 
but of bad citizens — explain the historical 
fact, that the Celts have shaken all states and 
have founded none. Everywhere we find 
them ready to rove, or, in other words, to 
march ; . . . following the profession of 
arms . . . with such success that even the 
Roman historian Sallust acknowledges that the 
Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in 
feats of arms. They were the true soldiers of 



Patriotism. 3 1 

fortune of antiquity. . . . But all their 
enterprises melted away like snow in spring ; 
and nowhere did they create a great state or 
develop a distinctive culture of their own." 
Thirlwall, reviewing the history of the Irish 
people in particular, describes them as " a peo- 
ple richly gifted with many noble qualities of 
mind and heart ; singularly deficient indeed in 
the faculty and the spirit of political and ec- 
clesiastical organization, neither comprehending 
its conditions, nor appreciating its advantages." 
If the Irish people, then, will ever found a 
strong independent state, they will surprise 
the historians and confound the prophets ; 
they will do a new and unexpected thing in 
history ; they will make the shadow return 
backward in the dial ; but if, at some remote 
day, when their greatest grievances are re- 
dressed and forgotten, they yet cheerfully and 
proudly take their place (a high place indeed 
they would take) as members of the great, 
united British people, they will do only what 
their brethren have already done with great 
advantage after centuries of bitter resistance, 
and what should excite no surprise at all, such 
is the violence with which nations are formed. 



32 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

and with which Patriotism invades the hearts 
of men. 

And as men are thus forcibly brought under 
the sway of a great national life where it ex- 
ists, so, where national life is feeble, and even 
where it may seem entirely lacking, where men 
shun their fellows and fortify themselves in 
surly fastnesses, or wander over wild deserts, 
destitute of political ties and common tradi- 
tions, without fathers, without oracles, without 
glory, even there they will not defend the 
ground they stand on, or hold the bread they 
eat, for their own bare advantage ; they will 
not hunt the wild beast in the land, they will 
not kill the boar and the lion, for mere sport 
or mere security ; they will not commit rapine 
and murder solely from brutish greed, or dia- 
bolical malignity. They have greed enough ; 
they have malignity enough ; and they give 
large play to all fierce passions ; but, in their 
dark spirits, with mixed humility and pride, 
they give tithes of all to an unseen, dimly felt 
country of their own. Great nations have 
mewed their mighty youth in impenetrable 
sanctuaries nourished by such rude offerings. 

Nor are gentler natures, in such situations. 



Patriotism. 33 

left without a country to love, or without means 
to serve it. Rather, perhaps, they know their 
country best, and serve it best. Like Abraham, 
who sojourned in the land of promise as in a 
strange country, but already possessed it by 
faith, and, darting his believing eye through 
centuries of eventful development, saw the 
blessed end and fulfilment of his country's life, 
and rejoiced; — the greatest instance we have of 
the unity of national life to the Patriot, and of 
the profound and unfactitious character of 
Patriotism itself ; like him, doubtless, many 
others, amidst the desolations of the earth, 
have communed with the unseen, and have 
beheld and loved their country in victorious 
hope, and have given it not tithings of what 
was offered to lust and violence, but a pure and 
entire life. Let a country so beheld and loved 
not be accounted unreal. For every true 
Patriot his country is, in a measure, as for these 
it is altogether, a land of promise : and the 
highest Patriotism is ever that which makes the 
most of the promise. 

It seems fated, then, that the elevated Pa- 
triotism, which will break forth into singing 
and flow in rivers of blood for no merely sordid 



34 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

end, shall exist, chiefly in the most civilized 
nations, but also in the most uncivilized, as a 
blind instinct in the baser souls, but in the 
nobler as a spiritual faith. As it apparently 
must exist, and as human history owes so much 
of its coherence and dignity to its presence, we 
may assume that there is reason in it though 
we did not put it there, and it may be worth 
our while to consider what the great Patriotic 
nations have thought of the ground of their own 
Patriotism. They had no distrust of faith and 
piety. They regarded their national life not 
only as under divine protection and guidance, 
but as existing by divine appointment to fulfil 
the will of heaven. In ancient times this faith 
was often mixed with the most puerile super- 
stition ; but it prevailed in all the greatest na- 
tions, and it was expressed with all varying 
degrees of clearness and strength, culminating 
in the prophets of Israel. Modern nations, 
as they have been eminently Patriotic, and 
especially as they have reached serious crises in 
their history, have borne witness to the same 
conviction, and those who have been called to 
pilot nations in extremities have been at once 
awed and sustained by new disclosures of this 
faith within them. 



Patriotism. 35 

Such has been the ground of Patriotism, 
most manifest where Patriotism has been most 
signal. Men have loved their country because 
their country is of God, and is charged with 
interests more sacred than life itself. Such a 
ground justifies the most exalted Patriotism, 
and might, if we had a faculty for defining, at 
last afford us a definition of our country com- 
patible with Patriotism. We shall, however, 
omit the definition, and simply insist that the 
essential and constitutive element in our coun- 
try is not territory, or race, or political forms, 
but the providential presence of God, binding 
us together as one people, to work out his 
purposes on the earth. 

If it is this that gives men a country to love 
and serve, we surely have one, and a country 
in the dewy morn of its life, with its mission 
almost wholly before it. When the body has 
served its purpose, the life that has held it to- 
gether releases it. When a nation has done its 
work, the indwelling spirit relaxes its national 
hold upon its members, and leaves them free to 
be drawn by the same spirit to new centres for 
other service. In the later stages of national 
life, when the end is assured or lost, Patriotism 



3 6 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

is naturally enfeebled and can barely support 
its waning strength by the traditions of the 
past. But in its youth a nation is richly 
equipped for its long career, and in its early 
advance, its Patriotism, instead of wasting away, 
abounds more and more. Americans every- 
where appear to feel that they owe more love 
to their country than men of other nations owe 
to theirs. They can hardly be naturalized else- 
where on the face of the earth, while foreigners, 
of all races, stretch out their hands unto us be- 
fore they reach our shores, and are one with us 
immediately. 

Some of this abundance of apparent Patriot- 
ism, however, may be entirely spurious. It may 
be gigantic egotism annexing the continent and 
the future. It may be the gross earth spirit 
exulting in plains richer than those of Sodom. 
Some of it also may be true Patriotism, magni- 
fied and animated by the levity and inexperi- 
ence, rather than by the divine freshness, of 
youth. How shall we try our spirits, and what 
shall we do, that our Patriotism may be genuine 
and unadulterated as well as conspicuous? 

First of all, we must love, as children, in a 
humble, reverent, teachable spirit. Our Patriots 



Patriotism. 3 7 

are in too much hurry to be patrons and bene- 
factors of their country. The first thing they 
generally propose to do is to carry their country 
on their backs. Then they will feed her with a 
spoon, and wash and comb her, and teach her 
the rudiments of philosophy. But our country 
is the mother of us all ; and our Patriotism 
should at first incline us, not to give, but to re- 
ceive. What good can come of Patriotism, if 
the Patriot is, from the start, superior to his 
country ? Who is there to receive any benefits 
if infant Patriotism proceeds at once to confer 
benefits? Young Patriots of America, restrain 
your premature beneficence. Lie still awhile 
in your mother's bosom. Let her breathe upon 
you and bless you. Let her tell you the story 
of her nativity, and of the treasures which pil- 
grims from afar offered at her birth. Let her 
tell you the deeds of her ancestry and of her 
kindred beyond the sea. Learn if she herself 
has done aught besides clearing the forest and 
building her railroads and her cities, and if she 
has any hope and purpose, besides increasing her 
wealth and luxury, in the longcenturies to come. 
Gaze not too intently on her rich and ample gar- 
ments ; be not dazzled by her Babylonish mag- 



3 8 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

nificence ; lift up your eyes and behold her face, 
and see if that be Babylonish too, or if it be a 
human face, expressing with its strength and 
its dominion, also the humility and rapt devo- 
tion of a servant of the Lord, going forth to 
bless the ages. Give yourselves time and op- 
portunity to know your country's place in the 
world ; to know her history and the Power 
which has guided her history, and is at work, 
beneath all surface movements, shaping her 
ends to-day. Turn aside to see the great 
sight, and to learn the deep secret of your 
country's life. So will your country be to you 
a true home and a rich inheritance, not a mere 
corn-field and sleeping-cot : and so will you be- 
come possessed by the spirit of your country ; 
and when, in due time, mature day and ripe 
occasion shall call you to the active service of 
your country, you will render, not the fussy, 
irrelevant services, in which so many Patriots 
wear themselves out in vain, killing, over and 
over, noble Percys who have been slain long 
ago, but real, substantial services, adapted to 
our actual situation, which is novel and unique 
among the nations. With much that the Patriots 
of other lands are laboring at, we have little 



Patriotism. 30 

occasion to busy ourselves. They are occupied 
with national security and independence, with 
popular self-government, and with religious 
liberty ; all of which have come to us freely 
from our forefathers, who won them for us in 
the field and at the block and the stake. But 
did they fight our battles, and suffer martyrdom 
for us, that we might abandon ourselves unre- 
servedly to ignoble ease, or scarcely less ignoble 
toil,— toil to gratify the lust of the flesh, and the 
lust of the eye, and the pride of life ? It would 
have been better to have left us to fight our own 
battles, and to suffer our own martyrdoms, than 
to have consigned us to such ignominy. But 
they fought and suffered for us, that we might 
push forward and win more conclusive victories 
for ourselves. And how shall we do that? 
How, indeed, but by using what was so nobly 
won for us, and what many other nations so 
earnestly desire! Independence, the right of 
self-government, and religious liberty, are not 
mere ''privative mercies" to be thankful for 
when one happens to think of them, like freedom 
from gout or cancer; they are not final achieve- 
ments which have no further use but to be 
glorified in speech and in song ; they are com- 



40 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

manding powers, looking to the future ; they 
are trumpet-calls to present duty. The Patriot- 
ism of former times was tested and exercised in 
winning them ; our own Patriotism has its 
noblest exercise in the thoughtful, faithful use 
of them. What £lory is there in possessing the 
right of self-government if we govern ourselves 
as capriciously as a tyrant or a lunatic might 
govern us ; or if, satisfied with the conscious- 
ness of power, we leave our authority in abey- 
ance, to see what happiness may come to us 
from the four winds ? If justice falls in our 
streets; if injury and outrage lift up their 
heads within our borders unrebuked ; if hideous 
social anomalies besot our land; if honored 
citizens grow rich by dealing out death and 
madness and pauperism and crime at our doors ; 
if our princes are brigands, and if shameful pol- 
lutions should creep into the chambers of our 
kings ; shall we say, with good-natured pride, 
that, at least, all this is not fastened upon us 
by hereditary absolutism, but takes place with 
our own free and full consent ? Will not self- 
government, then, become a byword and a re- 
proach? When abuses prevail by the whims 
and insolence of tyrants, they may foster the 



Patriotism. 4 1 

noblest spirit among the people; when they 
prevail through the connivance of the sovereign 
people themselves, what can they foster but 
degradation ? Verily, self-government is not a 
talent to be laid in a napkin ; it is valueless, it is 
perilous except when worthily exercised. 

We must fight our battles, then, at the con- 
vention, and at the polls, if not more valiantly, 
at least more seriously and more faithfully, 
more like men who follow one high purpose 
steadily to the end. The fatuous charges of 
light brigades, going off wantonly at a sudden 
notion of their own or of some gallant captain, 
or even at a winged word from disorderly strag- 
glers, are as unprofitable as the heavy firing of 
strong, well-handled battalions which fight 
steadily but have made a covenant not to hit 
the enemy. 

But what is it that we are to achieve at the 
convention, and at the polls? Is it to see that 
none but good, honest men get to places of 
trust and power ? Then, what if we are not 
good, honest men ourselves ? Shall crows be 
squeamish about color? What if the people to 
be represented be not good, honest people ? 
Can the convention or the polls, bring a clean 



42 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

thing out of an unclean ? When the upper 
pond is full it is easy to get water into the mill- 
race and on the wheel ; but when the pond is 
low, there will be a world of trouble. If the 
country is full of high-minded, securely based 
integrity, it ought to be very easy to get some 
of it into the public service ; but if lofty, stead- 
fast character is rare throughout the land, our 
popular elections will bear witness to its rarity 
in spite of our utmost vigilance. 

Herein it is manifest that we may not pick 
and choose among the dearly won treasures of 
our national inheritance. We cannot exercise 
self-government, though the right has been pur- 
chased for us, unless we also use the accompany- 
ing right of religious liberty. Religious liberty 
is, indeed, an earlier and a more essential ele- 
ment of our American life than even self-gov- 
ernment ; and we should imperil our well-being 
and our work in the world less by becoming a 
political dependency of Great Britain again, 
unspeakably monstrous as that would be, than 
by sacrificing our religious liberty, the first and 
distinctive achievement of the founders of our 
country. But we may sacrifice our religious 
liberty without returning to star-chambers and 



Patriotism. 43 

thumb-screws. Hide it in the earth ; overlay 
it with worldly business and pleasure ; and it is 
sacrificed more completely than if you surren- 
dered it formally to the Pope. Nay, parade 
and magnify it, yet make it subservient to 
trivial, self-complacent speculation, and to every 
idle, erratic impulse ; and it is worse than sac- 
rificed, — it is pressed into the service of false 
gods, the gods that rise out of the earth, — gods 
which it is our vocation not to serve but to 
vanquish. Religious liberty came into the 
world, so late, not to smooth the path of the 
irreligious spirit, in thought or life, but to open 
a n~w world of power to Christian faith and 
love. When this new world is recognised and 
fairly occupied by our people at large, self- 
government will be seen in its glory. The 
upper pond will be full. 

" We are betrayed, then," the profaner 
among you will say : " Our country is turned 
into a church ; Patriotism involves sanctifica- 
tion ; we are sold to the saints, after all the 
pretence of a broad road." Yet, the road is 
broad ; and it would not be safe to commit the 
country to the churches as they exist at the 
present day. They would dilute its natural 



44 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

life. Eminent and indispensable services are 
rendered to the country by men who are them- 
selves at war with the Divinity which shapes the 
country's higher ends. But this state of things, 
though much less objectionable than some 
others that can be conceived, is neither neces- 
sary nor glorious: and Americans should be 
the last of all men to rest contented with it. We 
in this country have asserted strongly that, 
though there must be division of labor and di- 
versity of condition among our people, yet there 
need not be and shall not be a fixed partition 
of the nation into head and tail, into honorable 
citizens to bear rule and to enjoy liberal culture, 
and outcast Helots to be hewers of wood and 
drawers of water for the benefit of the superior 
class. This has been a notable proclamation in 
the ears of mankind ; and to make it good is a 
large part of our mission in the world. But do 
we make it good, shall we ever make it good, 
will it not become the saddest disappointment 
in the book of time if a large part of our peo- 
ple are always to serve their country in the iron 
bands of short-sighted impulse or passion, with- 
out any conscious communion with the foun- 
tain of their country's life, and without any 



Patriotism. 45 

regard to the ultimate ends of their country's 
existence ? Are Patriots who so serve, what- 
ever their natural gifts, and whatever their con- 
tribution to the public good, other than Helots, 
toiling for a state in which they have no free 
citizenship? They may be brave, generous, 
well-fed, uncomplaining Helots; they may take 
pride and delight in their tasks ; but Helots 
they are still, and bondsmen, if, while drudging 
merrily for grog and pottage, they are always 
to be used by the Supreme Ruler for higher 
national ends which are in no wise their own. 

But they are not always to be so used. The 
procession of history, and the manifest counsels 
of God therein working, demand that the peo- 
ple of this country, called to the leadership and 
service of mankind, and furnished at the start 
with every outward advantage and every spirit- 
ual preparation, shall attain to the inner free- 
dom which consists in the apprehension and 
voluntary fulfilment of their highest life. If 
they attain not to this, which is in the direct 
line of all their previous history, what advance 
is there for them to make ? How shall they 
avoid falling away backward? Why are they 
here at all ? Has the God of Nations brought 



46 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

his long-prepared purpose to the birth, and will 
He not cause to bring forth? Undoubtedly, 
the American people, when they have got over 
the intoxication produced by the brilliant ex- 
pansion of their material life and by the novelty 
of their position in the world, will revert in 
earnest to the true path of their advance, and 
become a holy nation ; not a nation of spiritual 
pedants who will give the world away and serve 
the Lord in a vacuum, but a nation of men to 
whom the world and all its work will seem more 
worthy than ever of their noblest energies, be- 
cause, for them, the kingdoms of this world 
will have become the kingdoms of their Lord, 
and of His Christ ; and the work, in which in- 
stinct prompted and guided them before, will 
have become a reasonable service, in which they 
are called to be workers together with the 
Shepherd and Father of all the nations. 

When that time comes, what a country will 
ours be ! What a new light in the firmament 
of history ! The stars of the East will never 
grow dim ; but, for future ages, the gracious light 
of the West will make the heavens new. What 
a country will ours be, did I say ? Nay, that 
very country, which coming ages will bless, is 



Patriotism. 47 

ours now. That, and no other, was the coun- 
try which our fathers loved. For that they 
fought, in open war, and in the secret, per- 
petual war which is called peace. That coun- 
try is our country to-day ; and the faithful love 
of it is true Patriotism. 



LECTURE III. 

PARTY POLITICS. 

SEEING that we are called to full citizenship 
in a country whose early childhood overtops 
the seasoned maturity of many giant nations 
of the past and present time, and whose own 
maturity, yet very far off, is to wear a glory 
and wield a power which might well astonish 
the world that now is, it would argue a mon- 
strous unworthiness in us if we were a people 
indifferent to Politics. It would argue an un- 
worthiness still more shameful if we were to 
make our Politics a mere arena for covetous- 
ness and vanity to display their egregious 
capabilities. Our Politics should be conducted 
eagerly and enthusiastically by the people at 
large ; but the universal motive should be none 
other than a generous zeal for the right direc- 
tion of our national energies, through all their 
various operations, to their legitimate and 
necessary ends. Yet this zeal, this enthusiasm, 

4 8 



Party Politics. 49 

must not hope to accomplish its object by 
brooding and moaning over Politics in the ab- 
stract. It must come down to every-day work ; 
it must canvass the state and the country ; it 
must master the burdensome details of Party 
Politics. For let it not be supposed that prac- 
tical Politics, in a free country, can ever be any 
thing but Party Politics. 

The Presidential campaign (1884), already 
fairly opened, and the presence of worthy rep- 
resentatives of all the Political Parties known in 
these parts, invite us to the agitation of Party 
questions at once. For the sake of perfect 
order, if you will allow me, I will be all the 
different Parties myself ; and, for one brief 
hour, you shall be the calm, judicial American 
people, freed from Party ties, and undisturbed 
by any remnant of faction. While you enjoy 
such enviable dignity and repose, I must be 
hurried perilously through the tumultuous pas- 
sions of our national strife. I devoutly hope 
that, when I have gone through my transfor- 
mations, I may at last be myself again, if not 
something better. 

And, now, how many am I to be ? The 
Political Parties of a country may, generally, be 



50 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

classified roughly under three heads : the Party 
in power, the great Party in opposition, and the 
various juvenile or infant Parties, whose power 
and fame are yet to come. For completeness, 
we might add a fourth class, including the 
superannuated and the dying ; but I am not 
aware that we have any Parties so far gone as 
that ; and I trust that, in my transmigrations, 
I shall not be overtaken, in any Party, by the 
throes of its dissolution. 

For reasons which I need not mention, I 
shall appear first in our great opposition Party ; 
and let it be understood, all through, that I am 
so identified with the Party of the hour as to 
be entitled to make a free use of the first per- 
son plural, and to speak from the heart of 
the Party ; not from a mere advocate's table 
outside. 

Now, then, I am a Democrat to the back- 
bone. Hurrah for Jefferson, and for everybody 
on our side, dead or alive! At the outset, let 
me remind you that our Party has been called 
friend by the American people, and has borne 
the highest honors of the country for years and 
years ; that many of the greatest names in 
American history are on our side ; that multi- 



Party Politics. 5i 

tudes of the ablest and best men of to-day, as 
of former generations, are ours, throughout the 
country, as well as in our own enlightened town ; 
and that we have as deep an interest and as 
heavy a stake in the prosperity of the country 
as any others whatsoever. It is the land of 
our fathers, and it is to be the land of our 
children's children for ever. Remembering all 
this, and our numbers, the scornful attitude 
of Republicans towards us seems utterly unjus- 
tifiable. They talk as if we had no right at all 
even to ask for the suffrages of the people. 
But if our title is to be disputed, it must be 
by a wholesale proscription of American citi- 
zens. It will be said, of course, that we for- 
feited the confidence of the people by our con- 
duct in the events of the last twenty-five years ; 
but the reply is obvious, that our conduct was 
a historical necessity, and that we were sacri- 
ficed, in the regular course of things, to elicit 
the true and decisive meaning of the Constitu- 
tion, and of the people. And if we cannot pre- 
tend that the selection of the victim was alto- 
gether as arbitrary as at Aulis, it is our privi- 
lege and duty to confess our share of human 
fallibility, and to profit by the logic of events. 



52 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

We have been thinking deeply of late, and we 
have made up our minds to accept accom- 
plished facts. We are willing, if need be, to 
wear a little sackcloth and ashes for the past. 
But, after all, the past is past, and the Ameri- 
can people of to-day are not in any antiquarian 
mood. They are interested in the present, and 
the spell of the future is upon them. What 
they want is, not a pack of self-admiring Nes- 
tors, to prattle about ancient exploits, but 
plain, simple, honest men, to work their pres- 
ent will, and to realize their hopes in the time 
to come ; and here we are at their service. We 
think that we are needed for a long period ; 
we are certain that we are sorely needed for a 
little while. The nation has placed unex- 
ampled confidence in its present servants, and 
the confidence of the people has been flagrant- 
ly abused. What scandals have we not had in 
the highest places? What merchandise has 
been made of public trusts ! A long lease of 
power has made the Republicans reckless and 
uncontrollable. You have shaken the rod at 
them a number of times, but the darling pets 
have smiled archly at the rod, and proceeded 
with their frolics. If you will correct them 



Party Politics. 53 

soundly by putting us in power at the next 
election, all their pristine virtue will return to 
them, and we shall make such a determined ef- 
fort to be good that, to get ahead of us, they 
will have to sit up nights to study morality and 
honor, and there will be such noble rivalry in 
Political efficiency and purity as will withdraw 
public attention from the walking-matches and 
the prize-fights, and lure the very children 
from the skating-rinks to behold the spectacle. 
And so, worthy fellow-citizens, in giving us a 
lift this time, you will reform your government, 
and bless the souls of your old friends, our ene- 
mies, and give the whole world a jog forward 
in high morals. 

There is much more that I might say for our 
side if I had time to remain on our side. But 
the fleeting hour summons me, now a sturdy 
Democrat, to pass the deep abyss ; and here I 
am, without further ado, a Republican of the 
Republicans. As Republicans, we have no de- 
sire to proscribe American citizens ; no desire, 
on personal grounds, to keep out of power the 
very persons who are known as Democrats. Our 
distrust of them, our opposition to them, has 
been rational and patriotic, not malicious or 



54 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

selfish. The Democrats, within this genera- 
tion, allowed themselves to be beguiled, it 
makes little difference how, into the most un- 
hallowed and murderous rebellion that the 
world ever saw. Some people will think it 
malignant and unwise to say so. But it is his- 
tory ; and surely no apology is needed for read- 
ing history aloud, though it be our own history, 
and nearly the most recent as well as the most 
weighty history that we have. We are at great 
pains to dig and delve for the obscurest facts 
about ancient and remote nations ; and when 
we have found any facts, we pore over them 
without end to see if there be any light in 
them. Now, with our deep historical studies 
among far-away peoples and times, how stulti- 
fied we should be if, in order to heal the hurt 
of the daughter of our people very slightly in- 
deed, we consented to say nothing, or to say 
less than the blazing truth, to one another and 
to our children, about the most memorable 
years of our own history ! Great nations must 
feed on their own history ; and we could never 
make any progress by forgetting the great re- 
bellion. It must never, and will never be for- 
gotten. It is an unspeakable satisfaction, 



Party Politics, 55 

therefore, to have our brethren who erred 
so fatally, at last come and tell us that they 
have profited by the logic of events, and ac- 
cepted accomplished facts. Now, there need 
be no bitterness between us for remembering 
tha war. We can go over the terrible story to- 
gether, and see, with profound thankfulness on 
both sides, how fruitful the logic of events has 
been, how pregnant the accomplished facts are, 
and what a happy regeneration the Democratic 
Party has experienced to enable it to accept so 
much. Far from opposing the Democrats in- 
discriminately, I will here plead their cause, 
and gladly call attention to the significance of 
the step which they have taken, towards re- 
gaining the confidence of the nation, by ac- 
cepting accomplished facts. For lack of time, 
I can only touch on one of the facts. The war 
emancipated the Negroes, and invested them 
with the sacred rights, not only of human 
nature, but also of free and full citizens of this 
Republic. The Democrats, be it known here- 
with, have, happily, accepted this immense fact. 
Henceforth, perish the growling in the Repub- 
lican camp about the solid South. Everybody 
in the South has the full rights of a free citizen. 



56 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

If the South be solid, then, it is solid, not 
through the lawless violence of a dominant 
class (for there is no lawless violence, and 
there is no dominant class), but through a 
most happy and almost miraculous unity of 
sentiment among the whole population, black 
and white. Behold, how good and how pleas- 
ant it is for brethren to dwell together in 
unity ! The spectacle is touching in our land 
of difference and strife. It is almost enough to 
make the divided North vote solidly with the 
South out of pure admiration. Let the Demo- 
cratic Party have full credit for accepting ac- 
complished facts. It is a very great step for 
them to have taken. It fairly entitles them to 
show their faces once more among other candi- 
dates, and to present whatever claims they may 
have for public favor. But if it is itself pre- 
sented as a plea for advancement, it must stand 
thus : " We are very sorry that we attempted 
to cut the nation's throat. It was wickedly 
done. We were also natural bunglers to think 
of such a thing. We admit further that it is 
wrong, at the present day, to violate the laws, 
and to trample upon the Constitution. There- 
fore, let us rule over you." 



Party Politics. 57 

But the Democratic Party has other pleas, 
beside its victorious disposal of war issues by 
accepting accomplished facts. It is the Party 
of great reforms. Just what reforms future 
years may disclose ; — perhaps civil-service re- 
forms ; perhaps even financial reforms, who 
knows ? Failing utterly to perceive what re- 
forms, acceptable to the nation, the adherents 
of the Grand Old Party are either seriously dis- 
posed to attempt or in a position to carry out, 
we must put our hands upon our mouths in 
dumb expectancy, just as we should do if they 
promised to reform the weather or the laws of 
motion. 

We must, however, take some notice of their 
last and greatest plea — the plea for acceptance 
as deliverers of the nation from the incapacity 
and corruption of the Republicans. The 
charges brought against us are very serious ; 
and, if our country accused us, few among us 
perhaps, would expect to be altogether justi- 
fied. Our country has the right to ask so 
much, and the service is so glorious, that, be- 
fore the high tribunal, we would fain cry: 
Enter not into judgment with thy servants. 
But when we consider who our accusers are, 



5 8 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

and what it is that stirs their wrath and their 
zeal, we can confidently defend ourselves 
against them ; and the true service of our 
country requires us to do so. We are strength- 
ened in our defence also by recollecting that 
the work of the nation is the work of many 
centuries, and that it is not given to any one 
generation to do more than an inconsiderable 
part of it. But unto us, though unworthy 
enough, it has been given to do as much for 
our country in a generation as was ever done 
for any country in the same length of time 
since human history began. With all our 
faults, we are fresh from a series of services 
which saved our country, first from ruin, and 
afterwards from dishonor; and those services 
were, one and all, made necessary, and then 
resisted to the utmost, by the hardy reformers 
who are now ready to take charge of the na- 
tion. Every thing has not been done. But, 
allowing for resistance and friction, fair work 
has been done in past years ; and now we are 
ready for the work that is still before us. 

Suppose, however, that we had done very 
much less, and that we were in every way 
very much worse than we are, what is the 



Party Politics. 59 

value of this proposed policy of removing the 
faulty before you have something better to 
take its place ? The exact value of the policy 
depends on the circumstances in each particu- 
lar case. But the variations in circumstances, 
and in the value of the policy, may be compre- 
hended under a few general heads. 

The two rival Parties may be equally faulty. 
In that case, the policy may be described as 
the see-saw policy. You are entitled to come 
in this time, because we are at fault ; next time, 
we shall be entitled to a restoration, because you 
are as much at fault as we were. The value of 
continuity and settled order is not considered. 
The parties who work by this rule consider 
nothing seriously. They are playing — playing 
see-saw. 

But it is hard to measure or weigh the faults 
of rival Parties sometimes ; and the result of 
careful comparison is only doubt. You cannot 
say positively that you have something better 
to replace the old ; but you can try a change ; 
and if you do, the stars in their courses may 
take a notion to fight for you ; at least, you 
may escape with your life. In this case the 
proper name of the policy is the toss-up pol- 



60 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

icy. It is not quite as safe as the gentle, child- 
ish see-saw ; but it is an attractive policy for 
hot, eager heads. It appeals powerfully to the 
imagination, and seems to be the cheapest way 
in the world to national prosperity and great- 
ness. 

There is one other case. Of the two rival 
Parties, the one in power may be, on the whole, 
the less faulty. But it has been in power so 
long, and its particular faults are so irritating, 
and it is so possible that a few reverses might 
do it good, that the faulty Party is cast out, not 
only without any immediate prospect of being 
replaced by a better, but with a sad certainty 
that, for a while at least, things will be not bet- 
ter, but worse. I have not heard any short 
name for the policy in this form, and I must 
fall back upon circumlocution, and call it the 
policy of jumping out of the pan into the fire 
to teach the old pan a lesson. 

The policy, in all its forms, affects this educa- 
tional zeal. When no other good result is in 
sight, it loves to comfort itself with the thought 
that, at least, the rejected Party will be taught 
a lesson. This educational idea, I believe, is 
the main reliance of the Democrats in these 



Party Politics. 61 

dark days. They hope that you will turn us 
out for our sins, to teach us a lesson ; and (O 
the feather-brained reasoning of human hopes !) 
they hope that you will put them in, with all 
their sins upon them. That would teach them 
all the worst lessons of the dime novels. And 
shall this great nation show partiality, and give 
one naughty party a high education at the ex- 
pense of hopelessly confusing the few remnants 
of moral sense that are still left to the other ? 
If teaching a lesson is the object of elections, 
let the lesson be the wholesome one, that there 
is to be no gambling in the exercise of the peo- 
ple's sovereignty; that it will be all in vain for 
loafers to stand round, waiting for a moment of 
weak impatience in the popular mind ; that the 
way to advancement is to deserve it ; and that 
a low degree of merit is always to be preferred 
before one lower still. 

But my Republican moments are numbered. 
In addition to the old Parties, we have an in- 
teresting group of infant Parties, newly born, 
and of Parties in embryo, getting ready to be 
born. We cannot stop to count them now, not 
to speak of dwelling upon their individual feat- 
ures. Suffice it that I identify myself with 



62 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

their general condition, and speak for all the 
infant Parties together, whether they be born 
or unborn. 

Now, then, for better or for worse, I am with 
them, and of them. We would say respect- 
fully that no one need despise our extreme 
youth. Infant Parties are always in order, pro- 
vided only that they be lawfully begotten, and 
of sane, healthy parentage. Time, which wastes 
all mortal things, will wear out the toughest 
Political Parties. Our two great Parties have 
long been anticipating each other's funeral. 
They have been over-hasty and too ill-natured 
in their anticipations, perhaps. But they are 
both right in the main. They shall, each of 
them, certainly have a funeral. They have done 
good work in their tjme ; but they have not ex- 
hausted the possibilities of our political life, and 
they will not do so. They shall sleep with their 
fathers. Let them work while it is day, and 
learn to use gentleness towards those who must 
rise after them. Yet, we plead for no indul- 
gence, and we base no great expectations for 
ourselves on the natural necessity for a youth- 
ful life to succeed the old. There must be new 
crops next year ; but the bitter winds will not 



Party Politics, St, 

spare the blossoms for all that, and the frost 
and the mildew will come in their time. Infants 
there must always be, or the human race will 
perish ; but there will always be a heavy infant 
mortality, and those must survive who can. In- 
fant Parties in Politics have no exemption from 
this law. We look for more rudeness than ten- 
derness. We shall doubtless be exposed on 
the cold heights to perish. We shall be glad if 
we can suck the she-wolf, and make friends with 
the ravens and the woodpecker. But, after all, 
the beginning of life is more marvellous than its 
preservation. We are here, and we hope to live 
to tender unto our glorious country services 
which she will not reject. Even now, babes and 
sucklings as we are, we find no difficulty in re- 
plying to the scorn and derision of the stronger 
Parties. 

They charge us with utter insignificance be- 
cause we throw away our votes, as they say. 
They seem to think that a Political Party is 
nothing, and has nothing but votes. We think 
that votes and their immediate efficacy are sec- 
ondary, and we are disposed to ask, What is a 
Party profited if it gain all that can be gained 
by votes and lose its own soul,— its moral pur- 



64 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

pose and energy? If we do throw away our 
votes, we are still as rich as Alexander was 
after he had given away his treasures. Like 
him, we have our hopes left ; and our hopes — 
being neither selfish nor baseless hopes — are in 
no way inferior to his. But how is it made out 
that we do throw our votes away? Where is 
away? Is it in the infinite void beyond the 
bounds of political causes and effects? or is it 
only just outside the very narrow question, 
whether this campaign shall yield its laurels 
and its spoils to the naked and the hungry, or 
to the over-decorated and over-pampered ? We 
may surely withdraw our votes from this con- 
test, and place them where their effects will not 
be grateful to from-hand-to-mouth jobbers with- 
out throwing them away. We may employ 
them with open eyes and with astute political 
calculation, not to prop up falling towers, but 
to lay deep and strong foundations for the time 
to come. We are taunted also with our rash 
impatience, and our ideas are declared abortive 
and impractical. We are gently persuaded to 
admire the slow, hesitating, stumbling meth- 
ods, which, it is said, follow the true law of all 
secure advance in Politics, and we are solemnly 



Party Politics. 65 

warned that in our mad disdain of gentle, fair 
wind, we are invoking the fearful hurricane, or 
perhaps even untying the fateful bag and let- 
ting out the whole nest of boisterous demons: 

Una Eurusque Notusqut ruunt creberque procellis 
Africus. 

But we are not apt pupils. The piercing 
notes of warning only fill us with the sad re- 
flection that our Popular Parties — judged from 
a rational stand-point — are no longer young 
or vigorous, but are already entering upon 
the days when they shall be afraid of that 
which is high, and fears shall be in the way, 
and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and de- 
sire shall fail. We know not where it is writ- 
ten that nations are to fulfil their mission by a 
subdued attendance on fate. We are sure that 
our own people have not voyaged thus far, in- 
voking only the winds that breathe soft and 
murmur music. We are sure also that wide 
and stormy oceans still part us from the fair 
havens for which our fathers set out, and we 
would wish to hasten onward, even if we knew 
that we must endure far worse evils than were 
appointed unto them. Our true national life 



66 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

consists — not in peace and safety, but in fulfil- 
ling the highest ends of life at whatever cost : 
and, until those ends are worthily fulfilled, the 
charge of rashness is not more serious than the 
obvious counter-charge of indolence and unhe- 
roic over-caution. 

But the most serious of all charges against us 
is that we are not honest ; that we have no 
respect for vested interests and the rights of 
property. Perhaps this charge has a slight 
basis of truth. A young gentleman of leisure, 
the other day, bought a number of patent 
traps, very costly and very effective. He was 
so pleased and so excited over his new toy that 
he forgot his neighbor, and his neighbor's ox, 
and his ass, and set his traps in all manner of 
open places. Within an hour the neighbor's 
beautiful greyhound was caught, and maimed 
for life. The neighbor himself was near by, 
and he soon released the dog and smashed the 
trap. The young gentleman from the other 
side of the field, witnessed the pitiless Vandal- 
ism, and came up, hot and panting, and mut- 
tered something about that trap being worth 
twenty-five dollars. The neighbor was examin- 
ing his dog's broken leg, and did not look up, 



Party Politics. 67 

but answered, a little too profanely, " Damn 
your dollars ! " 

We are free to confess that we do not greatly 
respect the rights of traps in public places ; and 
that we are quite unscrupulous enough, and 
wellnigh profane enough, to damn all the dol- 
lars invested in them, though they should 
mount up high among the millions. Beyond 
this, our ideas about property are quite hum- 
drum. We have families to provide for ; and 
we wish to see our children and our children's 
children inherit the earth in peace. 

My hour is up ; and I summon you all to 
your places to continue the debate and to bring 
it to an issue. I can hardly expect your thanks 
for my exertions on your behalf, for I cannot 
flatter myself that I have made your way plain 
before you. I may even have helped to darken 
counsel, and to drive lame, faltering minds to 
despair of any assured Patriotic Policy, and to 
relinquish themselves, in their desperation, to 
mere Party discipline, or to the flickering light 
of melancholy personal hobbies. There never 
was less occasion, however, than at the present 
hour to despair of the Republic ; and there 
never was a fairer opportunity for a citizen. 



68 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

whose eye is single and whose heart is true, to 
serve his country. A cursory glance at all 
Parties, a frank recognition of the good and evil 
in them all, may confuse the weak, and will not 
suffice to guide the strong, but may be very 
necessary to awaken a sense of the seriousness 
of the situation, and to call forth a fresh, crea- 
tive devotion in those who are rising to serve 
their country. 



LECTURE IV. 

HOW TO HELP THE POOR. 

As long as we think that the only help for 
the poor is that they should cease to be poor, 
this problem will be insoluble. And as long as 
we think that we can help the poor as a grace- 
ful amusement, without making a real, living 
sacrifice for their sake, we imagine a vain thing. 
On the other hand, as surely as we shall have 
the poor with us always, so surely we may do 
them good when we will. The way to help the 
poor is not by any means so unsearchable as it 
is often made out to be. To hear many talk, 
one might suppose that in this matter the con- 
fident, capable old saying, " Where there is a 
will there is a way," breaks down utterly. But 
believe it not. The real difficulty here is about 
the will, and not about the way at all. The 
first thing to be done is to remove the stigma 
from honest poverty. There is " for honest 
poverty that hangs his head and a' that," and 

69 



Jo Prejudiced Inquiries. 

then every thing goes wrong. The honest poor 
who will not recognize any such reproach in 
their poverty ordinarily do well enough, and 
they are often among the happiest and worthiest 
inhabitants of the world. Socrates, buying his 
four measures of wheat flour for an obol, get- 
ting the best spring water for nothing, and 
walking the streets of Athens with bare feet, 
was as comfortable and as noble as Pericles. 
Paul, with food and raiment (often not of the 
best), was, with good reason, more contented 
than Agrippa or Nero. There are millions of 
poor people in the world to-day with less genius 
than Paul or Socrates, to be sure, but with no 
less content or dignity. Most of the actual 
happiness of the world, and most of its real 
dignity are in the homes of the poor. How 
shall we help such people ? Fiddlesticks ! How 
shall they help us ? We should help one an- 
other, of course, but we meet on equal terms, 
and the duties and courtesies of our common 
life are plain enough to those who will see. 
The serious problem is with regard to those 
poor people who find in their poverty a crush- 
ing degradation. They need mainly, not silver 
and gold, but clear eyes and understanding 



How to Help the Poor. 71 

hearts, that they may seek their proper wealth 
in rightmindedness and right relations to their 
fellow-men and to God above. If we can help 
them to this princely state, our main task is 
done. 

But how shall we attempt it ? We can 
preach, and quote poetry, and cite great exam- 
ples from antiquity, and look in upon the poor 
like beings from another sphere, clothed in a 
radiant cloud of smiles and wise counsel ; all 
this we can do without seriously interfering 
with our own separate and sumptuous living. 
But if our hearts are set upon doing the work 
thoroughly rather than upon doing it easily and 
cheaply, perhaps the surest and readiest way is 
to live among the poor ourselves, to set aside 
every badge of distinction, and be contented 
with the life which they must live, and practi- 
cally demonstrate its potential beauty and 
nobleness. All rich people will not do this, for 
all the rich are not consumed with a burning 
desire to help the poor. But we who aspire to 
be champions of the poor, if we are rich, can 
easily, for their sake, become poor. We have 
had examples enough and to spare of men who 
have risen from lowly cabins to palatial man- 



T* Prejudiced Inquiries. 

sions. Now we want some examples of men 
who, not through disaster or intemperance, but 
for the love of their fellows, have come from 
the princely mansions to the poor man's tene- 
ment and its plain living. We do not want a 
new order of mendicant friars, living outside of 
all human relationships. Nor do we want 
Diogenes and his tub, not to speak of streets 
and cities of tubs. But we do want happy mul- 
titudes of the most prosperous families of the 
land to cultivate all the fairest flowers and the 
noblest fruit of life, without the pomps and 
luxuries which separate man from man and 
place stumbling-blocks in the way of the faint- 
hearted poor. 

If it be said that this is asking too much, 
that it is asking the sacrifice of civilization, the 
poor will mark the word, and the doom which 
it implies. Nevertheless, let them who think 
so, by all means, save civilization. Let them 
reserve the magnificence and the luxury which 
constitute the long result of time, and which 
bear onward to their fulfilment the aspirations 
and pious hopes of mankind. But, inasmuch 
as they are called to be guardians and stewards 
of this priceless treasure, let them, at least, 



How to Help the Poor. 73 

hold and administer it, not for their own pri- 
vate comfort, which would be the most nefari- 
ous sacrilege, but for the benefit of mankind, 
through whose labors and sufferings, and for 
whose sake, it has been won. Let them give 
the full benefit of this great good to as many 
as possible. Let them take pains especially to 
give it lavishly to the poor, to reward their 
honorable toil, and to embellish their bare and 
much-enduring lives. Let them welcome the 
poor with distinguished honor to their hearts 
and homes, as the guardians of the baggage 
should welcome their dusty and blood-stained 
comrades returning from the fight. In the in- 
tervals of leisure between stately duties, let 
them go, without lofty airs or condescension, 
to the dwellings of the poor, to seek, as well as 
to give, profitable society and inspiring friend- 
ships. Let them, thence, gladly, if nature and 
Sacred Providence so direct, accept wives for 
their choicest sons ; nor hesitate, under the 
like favoring auspices, to conduct thither, with 
blessings and fair hopes, their tenderest and 
loveliest daughters. If they cannot do even 
this, if they cannot fully and unreservedly rec- 
ognize the humanity of the poor and the broth- 



74 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

erhood of men, let them cease to insult the 
poor with their idle prattle about helping them. 
Let them go away to their heathenish feasts 
and splendors, and make the most they can of 
their rubbishy civilization. When they have 
shut their doors and made fast their gates, let 
them court a strong delusion, lest they should 
see that they have immured themselves in a 
cavern and shut their fellows out in the sweet 
air and sunlight of the boundless world. 

It is a common complaint that it is all but 
impossible to give alms to the poor — that is, to 
do them any gratuitous service, without de- 
moralizing them and doing them more harm 
than good. That is a very happy thought for 
the avaricious rich. It pleads piously for the 
smile of heaven upon their stinginess and upon 
their selfish prodigality. Why should not 
wealth be hoarded or squandered at one's will, 
seeing that it would only do harm if applied to 
the relief of the needy? The condemnation lies 
in the fact that those who thus tenderly spare 
the poor do not spare their own sons and 
daughters, or their nearest friends, to whom 
they give gifts and render gratuitous services 
profusely and without misgiving. Are the 



How to Help the Poor. 75 

poor constituted so differently from one's kith 
and kin, or from one's intimate friends ? The 
whole pith of the matter lies here. You can- 
not throw alms to the poor as you might throw 
bones to a dog, or garbage to swine. That will 
demoralize them, if they are already demoral- 
ized enough to accept such churlish relief. 
And it will demoralize those who give even 
more than those who receive, confirming them 
in the crazy notion that they are as gods in 
benevolence and station. But to say that it is 
not safe for a man to help his brother-man in 
his need, even to the extent of giving bread to 
the hungry and clothing to the naked, is shame- 
ful and false, and a libel against the mercy of 
ages. What would the world and mankind be 
if it were true ? If you are afraid to give alms, 
come nearer to those who are in need. Be 
their neighbors ; be their friends ; be their 
kinsmen, if less will not answer ; and you can 
then give, with perfect safety, all that you can 
spare. There is hardly a limit to the possibility 
of giving beneficially to the poor, if we give in 
genuine human kindness. The friendship that 
goes with the gift makes it twice and thrice 
blessed. 



76 Prejudiced Inquiries: 

We often take the love out of charity, and 
the mercy out of alms, and the good-will out of 
benevolence, to such an extent that nothing is 
left but the carcasses and the names ; and, then, 
the names and carcasses alike stink, and defile 
all that they touch. But the defilement is 
owing not to the nature or the amount of the 
gifts, but to the insulting brutality of the givers. 
Man is made to be dependent on his fellows ; 
and all of us owe life and its highest blessings 
to charities, and alms, and benevolence. What 
else do we receive at our homes ? What else 
do we receive through the normal institutions 
of our social life ? Wealthy students of Yale 
and Harvard are charity scholars. The readers 
at the Astor Library are recipients of alms as 
truly as the inmates of a foundling hospital. 
But gifts made to the public at large are gifts 
to the body by a member, or gifts to the family 
from within ; and they are safe and sacred, and 
excite no suspicion or fear. The wealthy can 
give us parks, and gardens, and museums, and 
libraries, and colleges, to their hearts' content. 
They can improve the sanitary condition of our 
cities, and enjoy better health with us. They 
can do all they desire to further our mental 



How to Help the Poor. yy 

cultivation and our social intercourse ; and we 
shall not be demoralized by their kindness any- 
more than by a gleam of sunshine on a lowery 
day. Does not this fact point out one way to 
do very much for the poor ? Give more to the 
poor by giving more to the public ; and add to 
the value of the gift by partaking of it. Make 
your city, or your town, more habitable, more 
home-like throughout its bounds, and enjoy 
the full freedom of it yourselves. We wonder 
at the noble gifts which have been made to 
some of our communities. The proper wonder 
is that they are not increased a hundred-fold in 
number, and variety, and efficiency ; that peo- 
ple will go on hiding themselves from their own 
flesh, and sinking treasure in pitiful private 
shows, maintained with difficulty, and yielding 
little satisfaction, instead of resting in modest 
dwellings, and making the city, or the country, 
the true home to be provided for, and the pop- 
ulation the friends and kindred with whom to 
live and rejoice. Even the oldest and best 
public institutions that we have, the Christian 
churches, seem, from some points of view, to 
be still in their awkward and idle nonage. 
Think only of their spacious, comfortable build- 



78 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

ings, put up in the midst of the people and for 
the people, expensively furnished and expen- 
sively officered, and then shut up all the week, 
like an old maid's parlor, and, when at last they 
are opened for a little while, opened stiffly and 
solemnly, with little wise or hearty effort to 
bring in, and refresh with genuine hospitality, 
the whole mixed multitude ; while the opposi- 
tion houses, hard by, served by a devoted force 
who shrink from no menial drudgery, are open 
all the week, early and late, offering to every 
passer by a covert from the heat and from 
storm and rain, with free lunches, and free con- 
certs, and free Parliaments, and whatever else 
may lure the unready wayfarer to the main 
point. It is true that the churches aim at a 
much higher object than the temporal relief 
and comfort of the people. But their hour 
does not seem to have come to answer their 
higher end with the masses of our population ; 
and perhaps it will not come until they, like 
Him whom they call their Head, recognize the 
common life of common men as worthy of all 
loving care on the way to greater things. Per- 
haps the beginning of miracles for the modern 
churches will be like the old beginning at Cana 



How to Help the Poor. jg 

of Galilee. At any rate, there is a great oppor- 
tunity always open to help the poor, without 
risks, by helping ourselves and the whole com- 
munity together. 

But it is plain that there will be many cases 
which can never be reached unless they are 
sought out individually. There are withered 
limbs which are not affected by the renewed 
life and health of the body. Yet it is of no use 
to doctor them from without as separate beings. 
The body must claim them, and, in worst ex- 
tremities, hold the great bidding always valid, 

" Stretch forth thy hand ! " We may individ- 
ually wield this high prerogative of mankind, 
and, in the name of the race and its head, claim 
and restore our outcast flesh and blood ; and we 
shall be entitled to deal out our bread, as we 
shall find need, to those whom we have thus 
fully recognized as of our own household. We 
shall also be properly qualified to deal as wisely 
as possible, by way of correction, with the 
hardest reprobates, who will not be found more 
numerous or more incorrigible among the poor 
than among the rich. 

This is very fine ;— honor, love, kindred, to 
all, and, if necessary, bread and butter also. 



80 Prejudiced Injuiries, 

Is our poorer population, then, to become an 
idle, helpless crowd, and to demand its partem 
et circenses from others? By no means. The 
encouragement of industry and thrift is to be a 
main point in our dealings with the poor. But 
industry and thrift cannot be encouraged to 
any purpose by us as long as we, in our hearts, 
loathe them. In a divided, Plutocratic state of 
society, hard labor for subsistence, and the res 
angusta domi involved in the poor man's thrift, 
say what you will, are servile badges of a low 
degree. If they are not, why should we shrink 
from them and anxiously keep them on the other 
side of a firm partition wall ? If they are, or if 
we compel the feeble-minded among the poor 
to feel that they are, how, except on the lowest 
grounds, are we going to encourage them ? 
Give unto the poor real citizenship and full 
brotherhood to start with. Do not ask them 
to obtain their freedom or to purchase civiliza- 
tion with a great sum ; acknowledge unre- 
servedly that they are born free. Honor their 
commonest toil and their plainest living, not as 
necessary evils, but as becoming forms of the 
severe luxury of doing good. Proud men can 
perform the meanest tasks and put up with the 



How to Help the Poor. 81 

hardest fare and the simplest lodging in a regi- 
ment on duty, or in a Polar expedition, because 
they labor and endure, not as wretched pariahs 
bearing their own intolerable burdens, but as 
heroes in a noble cause, with their country's 
love and honor to back them. Why should not 
our laboring and suffering poor be deemed 
worthy of equal love and honor ? And why 
would not such love and honor animate and 
strengthen them as well as the others ? If it 
be said that soldiers and explorers are sustained 
in their hardships, not so much by the dignity 
of their employment and the sympathy of their 
countrymen as by the prospect of rest and re- 
wards when their labors are over, may we not 
ask if the poor, then, have no prospect of rest, 
and no hope of recompense ? The poor once 
had glad tidings proclaimed unto them which 
made their poverty sink out of their thoughts. 
They had a future opened before them which 
made them more than content, if need be, that 
all this world should be, for them, not a home 
to live and take comfort in, but a hospital in 
which to suffer and to die. Have the poor 
really cast away their great hope? Has this 
world become their all in all, and its fleeting 



82 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

joys and corruptible crowns their only con- 
ceivable rewards ? If so., what we should do 
for the poor, before and above every thing 
else, is to restore the Gospel to them. But can 
we do that athwart the partition wall? Can 
Dives give the Gospel to Lazarus ? Can Dives 
know any thing of the power and hope of the 
Gospel himself without being immediately 
placed in entirly new relations to Lazarus ? 

Had we not better stop ? Is it not plain that 
the system of relief suggested here is too fanati- 
cal to be thought of ; and that, unless there be 
another and a more reasonable deliverance pos- 
sible, the outlook for the poor is simply dismal ? 
But what is the good of howling ? Be unprofit- 
able humbly and quietly. The poor know how 
to suffer. They have suffered from the begin- 
ning of the world. They have borne active 
oppression and cruelty as well as neglect. They 
will still endure what must come. Many of 
them will conquer their strong enemy, and find 
rarest spoils hidden in the bare camp of poverty 
itself. These, while still poor themselves, will 
know how to help and comfort their weaker 
brethren. 

There will also be some of the rich and 



How to Help the Poor. 83 

prosperous who will do all that I have sug- 
gested, and much more. It is an experiment 
which any one can try without waiting for 
slow-footed public opinion, or for skittish, 
balky, blundering legislation, and without even 
a wish to confiscate other people's property. 
One man cannot, perhaps, help all the poor of 
the land, but what one man might do, in and 
through his own neighborhood, defies calcula- 
tion. And amidst the various ways open for 
prosperous people to employ their time, and 
money, and thought, and energy, how many 
are.there more sane, more worthy, more blessed, 
than to befriend the poor, even were the pros- 
pect of practical results far more limited and 
uncertain than it is ? 



LECTURE V. 

IS THERE ANY HELP FOR THE RICH ? 

The desolate cry of the outcast has caught 
the ear of our time ; and we have all learned to 
sigh and speculate over the sufferings of the 
poor, whether there be any help in us or not. 
But amidst all this tender and anxious con- 
sideration for the poor, who ever lays to heart 
the burdens and sore miseries of the rich ? We 
ply the wealthy with silly congratulations, 
which cruelly mock their secret woes. We 
fasten heavy responsibilities upon them, and 
we cover them with reproaches when they fail 
to meet our expectations. Weakly misled by 
their high station and their gay trappings, we 
sometimes even envy them, never dreaming 
that they are chained on their lofty peaks, and 
that there are vultures in those airy regions 
which forever fret and devour their hearts. 
The rich deserve pity rather than envy. They 
need sympathy and aid much more than stripes 

84 



Is there any Help for the Rich f 85 

and execration. It may be well, in the over- 
crowded countries of the Old World, where the 
masses of the people are poor and must always 
remain poor, to make the condition of the poor 
the crying, absorbing question of the time. But 
our country is emphatically a rich country. 
Very large masses of our people are already 
rich ; and still larger masses are facing that 
way, with more or less hope of eventual suc- 
cess. It is ridiculous for us to waste much 
time discussing the condition of the poor. For 
us, if we are anywhere near our right minds, 
that is a very simple question. The great 
question, fraught with difficulty and mo- 
mentous issues, for us, is the condition and 
character of the rich, and the best means, if 
any effectual means there be, to help that large 
and ever^increasing class of our countrymen. 

No class of people could well be afflicted at 
once with a greater variety of evils than the 
rich actually suffer. The name of their tor- 
ment is Legion ; and there is something ex- 
quisitely diabolical in the subtle art with which 
the softest luxury and the stateliest pomp are 
made the ministers of Titanic aches and dis- 
gusts. 



8 6 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

It may seem ridiculous, but it is perfectly 
true, that one of the commonest afflictions of 
the rich is poverty ; not poverty in any figura- 
tive sense, but an actual, distressing want of 
money, in the midst of princely revenues. 
Riches cannot be applied to provide for real 
necessities in the natural order and measure of 
urgency. The rich live in a world of their 
own, in which the common-sense of the poor is 
out of place. If the natural reason, which the 
poor must live by, were allowed to govern the 
rich, there would be no need of riches ; and it 
is doubtful whether the Institution of Wealth 
could endure a single generation. The rich 
must live, not with common-sense, but with 
the proper and peculiar sense of their order ; 
and that, generally, imposes upon them a scale 
of expenditure ascending freely with their pros- 
perity, and maintaining itself against all odds 
as long as possible when reverses come. It 
follows, that the rich can never be rich enough ; 
that there is the same need of accumulation at 
the end as at the beginning ; and that when 
this progress — this law of life in the higher 
order — is checked and baffled, the agonies of 
the sufferers must be regarded as much worse 



fs there any Help for the Rich ? 87 

than the pangs of hunger and cold among the 
poor, inasmuch as an attack upon life is at- 
tended with increasing horror the higher we 
rise in the scale of being. 

In view of these impressive facts, let the poor 
learn to think tenderly of the rich ; and, as they 
have opportunity (and opportunities are not 
wanting), let them cheerfully lend, or give away, 
their humble savings to their distressed superi- 
ors. And if a rich man, goaded by the imperi- 
ous sense of his order, should be driven to rob 
and cheat a poor brother, as happens not in- 
frequently, let the poor man, having faith and 
chivalry left, take joyfully the spoiling of his 
goods, and say: « Thy need is greater than 
mine." 

This necessity of lavish outlay and perpetual 
accumulation laid upon the rich, is rendered 
particularly burdensome by the plebeian consti- 
tution of the world and of human nature. The 
rich must live in a world of their own, and they 
must make it themselves ; but as they cannot 
get rid of the primary elements and wants of 
humanity in themselves, they must admit into 
their world the base materials of the common 
earth, and these base materials are forever be- 



88 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

traying their origin and their affinities and their 
essentially cheap nature. It was primitively ex- 
pected, and the hope was cherished long, that 
a tertiiun quid, neither flesh nor spirit, but just 
exactly what would support and delight the 
rich and escape the profanation of vulgar use, 
would be found among the stores of a sagacious 
and considerate Providence. The ancients 
searched for it through all lands and seas known 
unto them. But there was still hope, for there 
remained vast regions undiscovered. Now the 
whole round world is explored, and despair is 
settling upon the most sanguine, Were the Al- 
mighty a man we should say that he either forgot 
or spitefully neglected to create what was sure 
to be wanted. At any rate, what is wanted 
does not exist, and the rich must spend their 
money and their labor for that which satisfieth 
not. They must not only breathe the air and 
enjoy the sunlight, but also eat the food and 
wear the raiment of the human race. With all 
their dear wealth, and with all the will in the 
world, they can only obtain, substantially, what 
the commonest people have, — spiced, garnished, 
coddled, increased, wasted, but in the end the 
same. 



Is there any Help for the Rich f 89 

Many years ago, strangers who wished to 
visit the monument of the Marquis of Anglesea, 
on the Menai Straits, had to pass through a 
little gate, which was watched by a gentle and 
wise woman, who had studied mankind. Two 
brothers, wishing to enter, asked how much the 
toll was, and they were blandly informed that 
it was sixpence for gentlemen and threepence 
for common people. One of the brothers, fear- 
ing that he might never afterwards have so 
reasonable an opportunity to pass for a gentle- 
man, paid the sixpence ; the other, daring to 
accept openly the lot of the common people, 
paid their lowly toll. Then the gentleman and 
the commoner, having paid their respective 
fees, enjoyed precisely the same privileges, 
unless the gentleman was able to make a higher 
world for himself on the spot out of his inward 
exaltation and the homage of the wise woman. 
Perhaps that was in some respects an extreme 
case, but it illustrates the truth that the first 
necessity laid upon the rich is liberal expendi- 
ture, and that the clear gains from extraordi- 
nary expenditure must come through reflec- 
tions and congratulations on the simple fact of 
the profuse expenditure itself. 



90 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

Had the rich been always able, like the 
brother on the Menai, to make up their sepa- 
rate world out of extra payments, and reflec- 
tions and congratulations founded thereupon, 
and, for the rest, to live like other people, their 
lot, though preposterously hard even then, would 
have been much more tolerable than it is. But 
the Institution would have been too insecure. 
The world of reflection and congratulation 
would have been too subtle to attract the 
masses, and, without attracting the masses, the 
reflection and the congratulation would have 
starved to death. Then, the extra payments 
would have been withheld, and the whole fabric 
would have melted away forever. To give per- 
manence to riches, it was indispensable that 
some palpable object and reward should be se- 
cured for great expenditures. But the promis- 
cuous love, and open-handed munificence of 
Heaven to mankind, made it extremely diffi- 
cult to find any adequate object and reward. 
All things necessary for the support and the de- 
light of life were made cheap and abundant ; and 
a secret anointing gave unto man dominion and 
royalty on the bare Common. It was discovered, 
however, as already intimated, that the plain, 



Is there any Help for the Rich ? 91 

wholesome, delightful gifts of Nature could be 
spiced and garnished and spoiled and wasted, 
at an enormous expense, and that man could 
be trained, not only to accept the costly con- 
coction, but to become so dependent upon it 
that life itself would seem stale and unprofit- 
able without it. It was found also that, though 
man was created active and capable, and with 
a positive craving for exertion and effective- 
ness, it is possible to make him a tame, indo- 
lent, shiftless cripple, dependent upon the 
sweat of other people's brows for his daily 
bread and for every convenience of life, and 
devoted only to baubles and shadows. These 
possibilities were ugly seams in the fair system 
of Nature. But what were they left there for? 
Are we not under an awful necessity to devel- 
ope the latent evil of the world ? Either men 
had to remain mere brethren, members of a 
common family, heirs alike of one inheritance, 
joint laborers in the same field, and the great 
birth of riches had to perish in the womb, or 
ease, and luxury, and vanity, with all their fan- 
tastic and deadly train, had to be summoned to 
the rescue. The brave fathers did not shrink 
from the responsibility, and the dutiful children 



92 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

do not hesitate to follow in their footsteps. 
The Institution is placed on a solid foundation. 
There are palpable objects and rewards for 
prodigality. The masses are powerfully at- 
tracted. The success is complete. 

But neither an awful necessity at the begin- 
ing, nor complete success in the end, will pro- 
pitiate the stern sisters. The rich, having 
saved their order and created their world, must 
suffer unnatural woes, both from the vengeance 
of the old creation which they slighted, and 
from the original disorder in the very elements 
of their own sphere. All the circumstances of 
their life are elaborately calculated to give 
sumptuous pleasure, but they never fail to give 
poignancy and tragic amplitude to pain, and, 
at the height of their illusory fascination, they 
never please like the sweet, simple delights of 
the poor. Solomon, in all his glory, was not 
clothed like the lilies of the field ; but the mod- 
est children of the poor frequently are, and 
they often sit, with happy parents, at a feast of 
gods, which the rich could not purchase with 
mines of gold. And no number of attendants, 
and no scale of wages, and no ransacking of 
the world, can ever secure for the rich the per- 



Is there any Help for the Rich f 93 

feet service which the poor secure easily and 
gayly with their own hands. 

This question of service illustrates well the 
mocking contradiction which runs necessarily 
through the whole world of the rich. Servants 
they must have, or the elementary objects of 
their distinctive life cannot be attained ; but 
suitable servants they can nowhere find, and in 
this country least of all. In fact, the proper 
qualifications of servants for rich people form a 
combination much rarer than the most com- 
manding poetic or military genius. The ser- 
vants should be very capable, very intelligent, 
very refined, and austerely virtuous ; and yet 
they must by no means be the superiors of their 
masters and their mistresses ; that would upset 
all social propriety. They should be thankful 
for very small mercies, and they should be com- 
petent and prompt to render indispensable and 
exquisite services. They should really be fit 
for the highest positions, and perfectly con- 
tented with the lowest. It is clear, from the 
nature of the case, that there must be trouble ; 
and there is trouble, widespread and sore. 

It is easy to say that there are plenty of rich 
people who lead a simple, natural life, and 



94 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

know nothing of the racking annoyances here 
referred to, but know all about plain home 
comforts and pleasant intercourse with their 
fellow-men, and the luxury which riches afford, 
of doing good to others. I am sure that all 
this is perfectly true ; and I congratulate these 
simple and beneficent people on their happy 
escape from a sea of trouble. But, with regard 
to the matter before us, their escape is entirely 
irrelevant. They have escaped by deserting 
their order and abandoning the fundamental 
principles of the Institution. If they begin in 
earnest to do good with their property, they 
cease to be rich men. They confess them- 
selves to be God's almoners, and debtors to all 
the world to the full extent of their possessions. 
If they begin to live a simple, natural life, what 
is to hinder their going the whole length and 
living just like ordinary people ? And then, 
what are their riches good for ? They have 
taken refuge from the torments of the rich in 
the simple joys of the poor. If all the rich 
were to do the same, the order would perish — 
"to be no more. Sad cure ! " But our question 
is not whether the rich can abandon their posi- 
tion, but whether there be any help for them 



Is there any Help for the Rich ? 95 

while they maintain it. We have seen that 
their position involves the necessity of profuse 
expenditure, and that this involves the necessity 
of a fantastic, effeminate, and unnatural mode of 
living; we may add that this again seems to 
involve an almost entire forsaking of the 
worthier ends of life. We observe here the 
same cruel irony which we found elsewhere 
abusing their lot. For the rich would naturally 
seem to be a chosen people, released from the 
heavy yoke of common toil, and endowed with 
abundant means, that they might make the 
higher interests of their fellow-men their es- 
pecial care, and be the leaders of mankind in all 
the paths of a nobler life. This is what many 
of them would ardently desire ; and this would 
seem to be their manifest destiny. But their 
actual destiny is far other than this. It is to do 
what in them lies to withdraw the minds and 
steal the hearts of men from the worthier ends 
of life, and rivet them with fanatical zeal upon 
the lower. It is to elevate into factitious dis- 
tinction the ancillary processes of life, which 
other people dispatch more becomingly with 
very little ado. It is to make a serious, oppres- 
sive, exhausting business of eating and drinking, 



g6 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

and being clothed, and being amused, and made 
comfortable. It is to mind earthly things with 
supreme devotion. It is, propter vitam vivendi 
perdere causas. 

It is very true that, in these engrossing op- 
erations, the rich kindly intend the adorning of 
human life, and the improvement of society ; 
and, truly enough, our eating and drinking, and 
our social intercourse, and all the common occa- 
sions of life, should be invested with decency, 
and cheerfulness, and edification ; but these 
ends are easily attained, with little outlay of 
time or money, by all classes of people ; and 
they are utterly defeated and reversed by the 
unhappy and unmeasured attention bestowed 
upon them by the rich, to the stunting and 
crippling of their own lives, and to the great 
obscuring for many others of the real ends and 
possibilities of human existence. 

It is not to be supposed, I repeat, that the 
rich are satisfied with their mean career. Many 
of them are, naturally, the finest people in the 
world ; but they are pledged and bound to the 
cause. They often feel, like Prince Arthur in 
his prison, that, were they well out of it, and 
kept sheep, they would be as merry as the day 



Is there any Help for the Rich f 97 

is long. The life of men stirs and aspires within 
them. The real world, with its work and its 
history, kindles their imagination. The open 
kingdom of Heaven attracts their souls. But 
what can they do ? Is it possible to serve God 
and the Institution ? Or must they, to main- 
tain their position, lose their own souls ? The 
poor have the Gospel preached unto them: 
but, How hardly shall they that have riches 
enter into the kingdom of God ! is the nearest 
approach to a Gospel that there is for the rich. 
It does infinite credit to the undying heroism 
of mankind that, in spite of all this and very 
much more that might be added, men are 
almost universally willing to undertake the 
burdens of wealth, disdaining the peaceful, 
honorable, fruitful careers open to them in 
humble life, as Theseus disdained the easiest 
and safest way to Athens, desiring rather to 
encounter robbers and wild beasts as his kins- 
man, Hercules, had done before him. Heroism 
is well enough. But heroism, misdirected, may 
be a public calamity. It seems so in this case. 
It cannot be that all this self-sacrifice is called 
for. It cannot be that the world can afford it. 
There are surely better uses for some of these 



gS Prejudiced Inquiries. 

men and women than making rich people of 
them. 

I would not venture upon so revolutionary 
a course as to call in question the necessity of 
sustaining the great, powerful, perverse Institu- 
tion ; and in view of obvious facts, I would not 
cloak or deny our obligation, as a people, to 
bear a principal part in sustaining it in future. 
But in consideration of the appalling ruin and 
humiliation attending its maintenance under 
the present unscientific, non-intervention sys- 
tem, I may be permitted to suggest, in the 
name of humanity, that the burden might be 
somewhat lightened by comprehensive govern- 
ment regulation, or, if that be supposed to 
trench upon liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness, by enlightened local control exercised by 
the people themselves. I should decline the 
task of enlightening the people on the matter 
definitely, however ; because, though I am sat- 
isfied that the promiscuous multitudes have no 
business to be rich, I am in some doubt as to 
which of two classes of men should be entrusted 
with the whole burden of riches. There are 
difficult positions in the world beside that of 
the rich ; positions which must be filled, though 



Is there any Help for the Rich ? 99 

it would be vain for average men to attempt to 
fill them. The world must have poets, for in- 
stance ; but it would be monstrous folly for 
every ambitious simpleton to offer himself for 
the service. The poet must be born for the 
place ; and he must submit to severe training 
for his work, and learn in suffering what he is 
to teach in song. If there is any help for the 
rich, it must be in being properly qualified for 
their place. Dives nascitur non fit. That is, 
you cannot make a rich man of the right sort, 
by mere gifts of money ; the strong bent of 
nature must co-operate with assiduous training 
and fixed habits to mark him out for the place 
with the authority of a divine call. 

So much is to my mind perfectly clear. But 
what are the gifts, and what is the training, 
requisite to constitute a call to riches? I should 
prefer to answer that none should be allowed 
to be rich but those who have given ample 
proofs of entire independence of riches and su- 
periority to them ; none but those whose eyes 
are opened to behold wondrous things in the 
simple gift of life, and in plain human relation- 
ships and duties and hopes ; none but those 
whose hearts are fixed forever on the highest 



i ob Prejudiced Inquiries. 

ends of life, and who are content to practise 
and enjoy, day by day, in all lowliness, the vir- 
tues and graces of Home, and Country, and 
Heaven. The best soldiers in a righteous war 
are those who hate war and love peace. They 
will fight stoutly to the end, not in brutal, 
bloody ferocity, which might be cowed by dis- 
aster, but for the sake of conscience, which 
cannot change. Just so, would not men who 
love truth and goodness supremely and despise 
riches make the very best kind of rich men? 
They must grow rich, if at all, justly, serenely, 
and for conscience' sake ; and when they have 
grown rich they must practise the necessary 
enormities and brutalities of their position ex- 
ternally and mechanically, without the consent 
or sympathy of their minds and hearts. The 
unnaturalness and wretchedness of their situa- 
tion will be inconceivable, but they will escape 
personal degradation, and, suffering as blessed 
martyrs, they will glut the ravenous maw of 
riches, and set the rest of mankind free to de- 
sire and enjoy better things, compelling even 
those who covet riches to seek first the king- 
dom of God as the only way to their heart's 
desire. 



Is there any Help for the Rich ? 101 

So would I prefer to answer when asked who 
are called to be rich. I see but too clearly, 
however, that the answer of desire may be 
folly. It is certain that riches could not hurt 
these men, but is it so certain that they would 
not hurt riches? Could they ever become 
rich, or remain rich a single day? Would not 
riches in their hands be as chaff driven before 
the wind ? I have supposed them rich only for 
conscience' sake ; but there 's the rub. Could 
their conscience ever be enlisted in the service? 
If this fond project should fail, defeated by the 
nature of things, the alternative is obvious. 
We must conclude that the men properly called 
and prepared to be rich are the men proved, by 
the fixed setting of their nature and the con- 
sistent course of their life, to be good for noth- 
ing else ; men with minds and hearts " villanous 
low," without natural affection, or generous as- 
piration ; the off-scourings, the reprobates, the 
convicts of the race. 

It would be easy to transfer the burdensome 
wealth of the world into their hands. Let 
every respectable man use up what comes in 
his way, and use it only for rational purposes, 
and the transfer is made. When the transfer 



I o 2 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

is completed, thousands will sing anew song of 
deliverance, and be restored to the human fam- 
ily. And riches, deprived of the patronage of 
all men with a spark of nobleness in them, will 
have as little charm as drunkenness given up to 
the Helots. 

If it be said that this is not helping the rich, 
but simply shifting the burden upon new suffer- 
ers, I reply that the new sufferers are separated 
from the proper joys and sorrows of mankind, 
and will suffer little more in riches than in 
poverty. The torments of riches are developed 
mainly by the fierce light that beats upon the 
human heart and conscience, and in the pro- 
posed victims that light beats upon nether 
millstones. 



LECTURE VI. 

LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND DIVORCE. 

The honored founders of the Backwoods 
Lectures have made it a standing rule that, at 
least, one lecture of every course delivered on 
their foundation shall be on this conglomerate 
subject — Love, Marriage, and Divorce. I obey 
the rule with fear and trembling, knowing that 
all mankind are familiar with these matters and 
profoundly interested in them, and that the 
easiest thing in the world for a lecturer to do 
in the premises is to make a fool of himself, 
whether by the triteness and insignificance of 
his remarks, or by floundering attempts to be 
original in a path beaten smooth by the tread 
of so many millions. I prefer to expose my- 
self to ridicule in the directest and cheapest 
way, by creeping along warily among first 
principles, and emphasizing once more some of 
the plainest and most old-fashioned points that 
wisdom has to offer to the world. 

103 



1 04 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

There are, primarily, two different ways of 
managing these familiar matters, love, marriage, 
and divorce. They can be left to the blind 
impulses of our nature, which would generally 
ensure the entire succession with the least pos- 
sible delay. Or, if it be deemed shameful that 
men and women should regulate their mutual 
relations on the same principles as a herd of 
cattle, the whole matter can be lifted to a 
higher plane and submitted to the direction of 
the human spirit, which would bring about an 
orderly and rational arrangement. These are 
the two primary ways of proceeding: the first, 
according to the flesh ; the second, according 
to the spirit. We may also mix the two. But 
on what principle, and in what proportions 
shall we mix them ? What limits shall be set 
to the spirit ? And if the spirit is to be at all 
limited at the instance of the flesh, what is to 
limit the flesh in its interference ? In practice, 
there will be mixing of course. The flesh 
will war against the spirit, and the spirit 
against the flesh : and the spirit will often 
be worsted. But in the theoretical treatment 
of the subject, we may ignore the brute ele- 
ment. The Backwoods Lectures were not 



Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 105 

instituted to confer with flesh and blood. 
Here, we have simply to consider what our aim 
and ideal should be — what course the pure 
spirit of man enjoins. I pretend to no extra- 
ordinary acquaintance with the mind of the 
spirit ; but I believe that the spirit speaketh 
distinctly to the following effect. 

In the first place, it is not absolutely neces- 
sary, from the individual's point of view, to be 
divorced, or to be married, or, in the sense here 
intended, even to love or to be loved. These 
things, or some of them, are essential to the 
preservation and well-being of the race upon 
the earth. But the individual is not charged 
with the preservation of the race ; and, though 
he should always minister unto his kind, the 
whole welfare of his kind is too immense to be 
his direct object in life. No individual can 
do every thing that there is to be done for 
the race ; and no one need embitter and over- 
whelm his life by self-denying efforts to love 
and marry, against the grain of nature and cir- 
cumstance, for the benefit of mankind. The 
race will not be suffered to become extinct be- 
fore the time ; and those who are disinclined 
to love and marry will find other ways to serve 
their generation. 



1 06 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

But perhaps few would feel constrained to 
love and marry out of pure devotion to the 
race. Many more probably are in danger of 
submitting themselves to such constraint 
through an impression that love and marriage 
are essential to the completeness of the indi- 
vidual life. Most individuals, of course, find 
what completeness they ever attain to through 
love and marriage, and that holy state is ex- 
ceedingly beautiful and honorable in all men 
and women who are called thereto, and who 
fulfil their calling faithfully. But it must not 
be forgotten that some of the most perfect 
lives, both of men and of women, upon all the 
earth, have been lives in which marriage, and the 
love which is associated with it, had no place. 
To many this will seem to be contradiction in 
terms, and they will infer that I misapply the 
word perfect to some one-sided, ascetic develop- 
ment, which may have a commanding strength 
of its own, but not the symmetrical, genial 
strength of human nature. But I speak ad- 
visedly ; and I mean that no grace or perfection 
is developed in the life of man or woman, 
through love and marriage, which has not been 
and may not be developed as highly in virgin 



Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 107 

lives. It is not well for man to be alone. It 
is not well for woman to be alone. But what 
occasion is there, in our modern life, at least, 
for either of them to be alone ? They are 
brought up together, and they converse to- 
gether every day of their life, and there is 
nothing to hinder their reaping the full benefit 
of each other's society. They must observe a 
certain decorum and a measure of reserve 
toward one another, it is true ; but that is in- 
tended and rightly calculated to further and 
ennoble their intercourse, not to repress and im- 
poverish it. Men and women to-day in civilized 
life cannot be alone, and they cannot be with- 
out opportunities to partake of the highest and 
best in one another's life. Men, at the very 
start, may know and enjoy the richest, tender- 
est fulness of womanhood in their own moth- 
ers and sisters ; and in their fathers and broth- 
ers, women have a sovereign command of the 
noblest strength of manhood. Marriage itself, 
with the love appropriate to it, is a great mys- 
tery. Beauty, and desire, and the ecstasy of 
possession, and the romance of companionship, 
are mere preliminaries, and they soon pass 
away, like the tender glory of daybreak or of 



108 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

early summer. What then remains, if all has 
not been in vain, is a perfect realization by two 
persons, in relation to one another, of the corpo- 
rate life of humanity, of membership in one 
another. And this surely is no finality, but a 
preparation for the realization of the same in 
relation to the whole race, when there shall be 
no more marrying or giving in marriage among 
men, but the whole body of redeemed mankind 
shall be married as a chaste virgin to Christ, and 
be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh forever. 
This is the supreme end of love and marriage. 
But many shall attain to the end of the great 
mystery by another path than love and mar- 
riage on the earth ; and their life, even upon the 
earth, will have its solace, and its foretaste of 
the end, in communion with kindred spirits, and 
in various ministrations to the needy, and most 
of all, perhaps, in the joy of a blessed offspring. 
For let it not be supposed that parentage and 
fruitfulness are matters of mere carnal birth. 
The Father of his Country, the Father of the 
Faithful, and a Mother in Israel, are not idle 
phrases, or legends of the early world. There 
is the deepest personal significance for men and 
women of the latest times in the words of 



Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 109 

ancient prophecy : " Sing, barren, thou that 
didst not bear ; break forth into singing, and 
cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child ; 
for more are the children of the desolate than 
the children of the married wife, saith the 
Lord." Mere birth according to the flesh is a 
slender tie. It confers little honor or blessing 
on the parents, and it gives them but a slight 
and brief hold upon the child whom they cast 
adrift upon the world. The children that are 
born are the children of the race, the children 
of men; and they shall have the joy of fathers 
and mothers in them who will receive them in 
the Highest Name, and live the true human 
life before them, and so assert their essential 
relationship. 

Thus, the true ends of life, the highest ends 
and noblest satisfaction even of love and mar- 
riage, may be fully attained in virgin lives ; so 
that, from the individual's point of view, love 
and marriage, however desirable, are not to be 
deemed necessary. I urge this, not in the in- 
terest of celibacy, but in the direct interest of 
love and marriage themselves, to guard them 
from dishonor and abuse. They are frequently 
invoked to patch and support dilapidated, im- 



no Prejudiced Inquiries. 

becile lives; and sometimes excellent people, 
believing it indispensable that they should 
marry, and having waited long for the true 
sign from heaven, grow weak in faith, and, at 
last, desperate, accept spurious loves and 
false marriages, and make shipwreck of fair ca- 
reers. The proper safeguard against such mis- 
takes, and the right preparation for true mar- 
riage, is to be well grounded on the dignity and 
sufficiency of the single life. Let none think of 
love who cannot live nobly without it ; let none 
presume to marry who cannot stand erect alone. 
Approach not love as a beggar, or marriage as 
a dependent ; receive them, if at all, royally, 
with gifts and dowries. 

The majority of men and women are doubt- 
less called to love and matrimony. But the 
true call, when most unmistakable, is not loud 
and hurried, and is not intended to be heeded, 
or even to be heard very distinctly, till ripe 
years and ripe character have been reached. 
Man is to be created first ; then, perhaps, he 
may have a help-meet. But the help-meet is 
not to be his better half, or either half, or any 
essential part of him. She is not to finish mak- 
ing him. He should be completed by his Maker 



Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 1 1 1 

before he is entrusted with a wife. Likewise, 
the woman is to be formed, and prepared to be 
a help-meet for the man, before she assumes that 
position, or begins to trouble her head or heart 
about it. The proper work of early years is the 
creation of man and the formation of woman. 
Love and marriage are not to be once thought 
of till these momentous processes are well ad- 
vanced. Any practical recognition of this un- 
questionable principle will seem hopeless to 
some ; and they will ask frantically if the young 
are to be doomed to solitary confinement, or 
subjected to Asiatic surveillance, and so forth. 
But a truce to their injurious thoughts ! The 
young are far more sinned against than sinning 
in the matter. They have instincts, not animal, 
but human, which, unless they are battered 
down, or stifled and starved, by the perversity 
and inanity of adult life and society, will go far 
to secure them against precocious absorption 
and premature choice in love. The soul of 
youth is " like a star and dwells apart." Its com- 
panions, however familiarly known, are known 
only through the radiance of universal light, and 
remain enveloped in distinct atmospheres and 
fixed in separate orbits. To the sacred modesty 



1 1 2 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

of the young, bright visions of brave gentlemen 
and " a world of ladies" are familiar; but the 
common world of love and marriage does not 
exist. And when, at last, it does arise before 
them, they view it with some alarm and impa- 
tience. They have so many discoveries to make, 
so many brave adventures to pursue, so many 
gifts to exercise, so many worlds to occupy, 
that this, with its peculiar demands upon them, 
seems almost an impertinence. Of Adonis it 
was said : " To hunt he loved, to love he 
laughed to scorn " ; and therein he was a type 
of unspoiled, healthy youth, disdaining to sac- 
rifice its opening career and its widening world 
to what, in immature years, can only be an in- 
ordinate, all-absorbing passion. 

Do not talk, then, of solitary confinement or 
of Asiatic surveillance, but cease to grieve and 
insult the guardian angels which accompany 
the young into the world. Have done with 
your assaults upon their natural modesty in 
the various arrangements of their life which 
you control, or should control, nor dare to crib 
and confine them within the narrow bounds of 
a mean, conventional existence. Aid them in 
all generous expansion and elevation of their 
lives, through active converse with nature in 



Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 1 1 3 

her various forms, through a large acquaintance 
with the work of the world they live in, through 
the discipline and proper exercise of their own 
varied powers, and, above all, through a living, 
loyal faith in the Lord and Saviour of men, — a 
faith issuing in earnest service in the world and 
in daily and hourly adoration and praise in 
secret. With their pure and aspiring instincts 
properly seconded by the sympathy and sup- 
port of their elders, the young, as a rule, will 
reach a fair maturity before they are disposed 
to hearken to the call to love and marriage. 

But when the trying period of youth has 
been safely passed, and full maturity has come, 
it is still very easy for the ripe man to make a 
fool of himself in these matters, and it is truly 
said that there is no fool like an old fool. Pre- 
sume not too much, then, on your full age and 
ripened character. Rush not into the holiday 
crowd, like the companions of Romulus, to 
pick a mate for life. If you go forth to pick, 
by what standard will you make selection? 
Will you please your fancy merely, or will you 
seriously choose excellence, whether beauty 
and grace of person, or weightier qualities of 
mind and character? If you choose for mere 
fancy, what good has your maturity done you, 



114 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

and what solid happiness can you expect in the 
long years to come ? If you will choose excel- 
lence, who are you that you propose, not only 
to sit in judgment on the flower of all the world, 
but also to appropriate the very choicest for 
yourself? Paris suffered unutterable calamities 
for giving judgment when commanded to do so, 
and have you the hardihood, unasked, to pro- 
nounce a judgment, and to make a capture 
withal that must set all the furies on your 
track? Nay, I pray you beware. Though of 
ripe age, let the modesty of youth, awakened 
into reverence, abide with you still. Go not 
forth rashly to seek your true yoke-fellow. It 
were almost better to let your mother and your 
grandmother go on your behalf, for, though 
their choice might be even worse than your 
own, they would save you from being demoral- 
ized by a distracting pursuit and by fantastic 
expectations. But neither go forth yourself, 
nor yet let your good mother or grandmother 
go on your behalf. Attend to the business of 
life as in early days. Do the work and enjoy 
the good of the world in peace. If you desire 
a help-meet, make worthy preparations for her 
reception, but seek her not. The Great Crea- 
tor can bring her to you Himself, even as He 



Love, Marriage, and Divorce. 1 1 5 

brought our mother Eve to Adam at the first. 
If He brings her not, in all your seeking you 
will find but sorrow. If He brings her, you 
may sleep and rise night and day, and perform 
your allotted tasks without care until she comes. 
Let there be no wilfulness or impatience, then, 
and no fortuitous gropings, no purblind, pro- 
fane alliances, no preoccupation of the place 
which the favor of heaven may deign to fill. 
At the appointed time divine messengers will 
bring the prepared partner of your life to your 
presence. There will be a glad, thankful recog- 
nition rather than a bold, selfish choice. 
Having waited in faithful service so long, and 
having received your love as a gift from heaven 
at last, you will still set heaven above all else, 
and your love will be devoted fellow-service 
rather than idle and separate indulgence. Your 
love will not be less, but greater and truer for 
recognizing what must be above it. You may 
well say to your beloved : " I could not love 
thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more ", 
for this firm devotion, rising above your love, 
will also encompass it round about: and secure 
it forever. You will marry in the Lord, and 
though your accomplished Eve be passing fair 
and please you wondrously, you will hence- 



1 1 6 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

forth love her, not because she is fair and 
pleases you, but because she is your wife, the 
gift and trust of heaven. 

Thus loving, and thus marrying, you come so 
near the normal state of family life as it was 
" from the beginning," that you may disregard 
the divorce question as an unnatural specula- 
tion which presupposes a second fall of man. 
But in cases of spurious love and false mar- 
riage, there is an inherent divorce already, and 
Moses must do the best he can, and save what 
individual and social morality it may be yet 
possible to save. Only some miserable com- 
promise will be practicable, unless, indeed, 
the unhappy parties themselves, after so 
much folly, will at last be wise. For wisdom 
has a way of salvation even for them. It is 
simply to accept the dreary situation nobly ; 
renouncing all license and illusion for the fu- 
ture, and expiating accomplished blunders by 
kindly, patient, faithful devotion to one an- 
other, in the sight of God, to the end. 

" Happy and wise who consents to redouble his service to 

Laban, 
So, fulfilling her week, he may add to the elder the 

younger, 
Not repudiates Leah, but wins the Rachel unto her ! " 



LECTURE VII. 

THE USES OF LEARNING. 

We have no institutions which command the 
support and kindle the enthusiasm of all classes 
of people so readily as the schools of every 
grade, from the district school to the univer- 
sity. Every one believes in learning whether 
he believes in any thing else or not. Other 
hopes have failed ; other enterprises of great 
pith and moment have come to nought ; but 
education is flourishing and advancing with 
the benedictions of the whole people. It is 
true that there is occasionally some private 
disappointment even here. Faust has studied 
theology and law and medicine and what not ; 
yet he is worse off at the end than at the be- 
ginning: and Faust lives wretchedly, without 
poetic glory, and without any hope of redemp- 
tion, in every large city and in many a country 
town on this continent. But Faust is a crank, 
and his career has no significance for the bril- 

117 



1 1 8 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

liant companies of ardent youth who throng 
our seats of learning, or for the toiling fathers 
and mothers who labor to support them, and 
ponder ineffable thoughts in their hearts. 

Some observers, who are not at all affected 
by occasional instances of total failure among 
scholars, are perplexed not a little by the mys- 
terious dissensions of the great dispensers of 
learning. The masters would have us all 
learn something certainly, but they cannot 
agree upon any course to prescribe for us. 
When we seek direction, and ask for true 
learning, the answer comes, from doctors great 
and small, with the confused noise of battle, — 
" Lo here ! " " Lo there ! " " Ecce in deserto! " 
" Ecce in penetralibus ! " Perhaps this is all 
right and arises from the vastness of learning. 
True learning, probably, is like the infinite ; — 
you cannot miss it whichever way you go, and 
all the schools, and all the methods, and all the 
masters are right. This is the most charitable 
view, and also the most comfortable. But there 
are other views, which leer at our comfortable 
thoughts, and croak sinister suggestions to dis- 
turb our peace. In the palmiest days of Greek 
learning, Aristotle declared that his countrymen 



The Uses of Learning. 1 1 9 

could not make up their minds as to the ends 
to be sought in education, and therefore, of 
course, could not agree about the means to be 
employed. Can it be that we also, at this late 
day, and with all our educational zeal and hope- 
fulness, are divided and perplexed about courses 
and methods in learning only because, like the 
old Greeks, we have applied ourselves to the 
means without determining what the end is to 
be ? Can it be that our great hopes are founded, 
not on a distinct contemplation of effective 
means working triumphantly towards a glori- 
ous end, but merely on the fact that there is a 
great deal of vigorous beating about the bush 
going on, and that some kind of game must 
surely be started ? I cannot believe that prac- 
tical Americans could become so excited over 
hopes so indefinite. I should much sooner be- 
lieve that our trouble is owing, not to aimless- 
ness, but to a tropical redundance of aims, 
all clear, all strong, all striving for supremacy. 
If this be the case, we must moderate our am- 
bition. We cannot have every thing under the 
sun supreme all at once. The attempt can only 
make our learning an immense, amorphous, over- 
whelming heap. We must give up the idea of 



1 20 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

learning or education as a unity, and rend the 
schools into independent sects, with single or 
coherent aims, or we must save the unity of 
learning by recognizing a supreme end, to 
which all other ends must be subordinate and 
subservient. I think we should all at present 
deprecate a final division and sub-division. At 
any rate, we ought not to divide until we have 
examined the uses of learning most commonly 
regarded, to see if there be not one among them 
worthy to be exalted above its fellows and ca- 
pable of retaining them all in its service. 

Learning is frequently sought for the sake of 
worldly advantage. It is sought because it is 
supposed to be a good bread-winner and 
money-maker. It is a known fact that many 
have risen from abject penury to opulence 
through learning. And many successful men 
have commended learning to the young as the 
surest of all ways that lead on to fortune. As 
money-making is the main business of mature 
life, there would be a certain marked congruity 
in making it also the supreme, avowed end of 
learning. It would link our earliest days to our 
latest, and turn the heart of the fathers to the 
children, and the heart of the children to their 



The Uses of Learning. 121 

fathers. It would add professional dignity 
and a scientific sense of honor to business, and 
give point and sharp reality to learning. It 
would make ruthless havoc of some time- 
honored studies and elegant customs in the 
schools, no doubt. Greek might have to go, 
and with it the sweet, perennial fount of 
poetry, and the strong, patient tortoise that 
supports, without a groan, the prodigious 
frame of metaphysics. We might endure all 
that, to be sure, but sporting and rioting 
would also have to be conditioned, and fast 
young men, the flower of the age, would have 
to be brought to their senses, and the tender 
grace of academic idling and dawdling would 
come to a perpetual end. Let it not be sup- 
posed, however, that the course of study would 
be slight or narrow, or that the genius loci 
would be a clown in the new academy. The 
sphere of the money-maker is the wide world. 
His sails whiten every sea, and his messengers 
explore all lands. The material he deals with 
is the whole wealth of universal nature. He 
must know the properties and uses of all cre- 
ated things. He must know the dispositions 
and manners of men of all tribes and tongues. 



122 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

He must condescend to men of low degree, and 
minister to the poor and the outcast ; but he 
must also rise above princes and lay them un- 
der tribute, and cause the proudest aris- 
tocracies to serve him. He must know how 
to pick the brains of genius, and how to utilize 
good and evil. He must watch the tides in 
the affairs of men, and profit by them, whether 
they ebb or flow. The alertness, the penetra- 
tion, the foresight, the breadth and clearness of 
view, the grasp and decision, the industry, the 
patience, the urbanity, and other great quali- 
ties implied in all this, are sufficient to show 
that an education which made money-making 
its supreme end would be a most formidable 
rival of the immense and amorphous system, 
in the acquisition and command of knowledge, 
in the training of the intellectual powers, and 
in the formation of noble manners. 

The fatal inconvenience in recognizing 
money-making as the supreme end of learning 
is, not any danger of narrowness or feebleness, 
but the insanity of the very idea. Money has 
nothing of the nature of an end about it, and 
money-making itself needs a worthy end for 
its own justification. To a certain extent it 



The Uses of Learning. 123 

has this in the universal need of sustenance 
and of the interchange of ministrations among 
men. But money-making never recognizes an 
ultimate end. When it reaches its proper goal, 
it rushes past it, and hurries on and on more 
furiously than ever, like John Gilpin's horse. 
If it be said that money-making, though illusory 
as an end in learning, is effective as a never-fail- 
ing stimulus, and that this is what we need, 
that amounts to saying that, if you tie us to 
the tail of a runaway horse, we may not know 
exactly where we are going, but we shall cer- 
tainly go a long way, and go very fast, and 
have vigorous exercise, and we ought to be 
satisfied. This is snubbing us in our search 
for an end in learning ; but we will persevere in 
our search, and we must turn away sorrow- 
fully from money-making, versatile, and power- 
ful, and industrious, and courtly though it be. 

There are those, and they are many, who de- 
vote themselves earnestly to learning, because 
they hope thereby to secure for themselves, not 
silver and gold, in the first instance, at least, 
but a great and honored place in the thoughts 
of men ; afterwards, perhaps, incidentally, some 
little material advantage. Learning they con- 



124 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

ceive to be a distinguished ornament — a meri- 
torious possession, which men will not willingly 
allow to go unrecognized or unglorified : and, 
without inquiring into the grounds of orna- 
ment or of merit, they are willing to cultivate 
learning, whatever it may cost, for the sake of 
the glory alone. Some of them see little of 
the coveted glory in their lifetime. But they 
are comforted with the thought that slow 
growth means solidity and permanence; and 
they die in faith, and give commandment con- 
cerning their bones, that the "pilgrim gray," 
whenever he comes, may not fail to find them. 
The majority, however, of those who study for 
glory prefer to receive their meed from their 
own contemporaries, even if it must be of an 
inferior quality and less enduring. And there 
are students, male and female, not a few, who 
wade painfully through a dreary variety of ut- 
terly distasteful studies, with no object or hope 
in the world beyond that of making a little 
nine-days' display in their native town: and 
when they have made that, they cast their 
accomplishments, with much satisfaction, to 
the owls and the bats. 

Something might be said in favor of recog- 



The Uses of Learning. 125 

nizing glory as the end of learning. Man is 
not a creature to be put under a bushel. He 
is entitled, not only to a free development, but 
also to an open manifestation of his powerful 
nature, and to a certain amount of considera- 
tion from his fellows. Men everywhere assert 
this claim ; and they so often do it in cruel and 
vulgar ways that it might be a great public 
blessing if learning, with its quiet, inoffensive 
demeanor, could be set up as the universal title 
to glorification. But the practical difficulties 
of a system of education which should adopt 
glory for its end would be enormous. Who 
would direct the studies and award the glory? 
If the professors undertook to do so, the multi- 
tude might fail to ratify their award, and the 
professors might have to furnish all the glory 
themselves at the greatest inconvenience. If 
the multitude should take the whole matter 
into their own hands, could they ever agree' 
upon a course of study and a standard of 
merit? Would it not be quot homines, tot 
sententice, or nearly so? And if they could 
agree to-day, would they be of the same 
mind to-morrow? The multitude, it must 
be remembered, is many-headed, and lives in 



126 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

an open, windy place, where ideas are kept in 
rapid circulation. The end would probably be 
the elective system in its extreme form. Ev- 
ery man would learn that which was right in his 
own eyes, and the judges would crown a man 
to-day and whip him to-morrow for the same 
performance : sic transit gloria. Then, if the 
multitude is the fountain of honor, is not 
learning, after all, a degradation, — a falling 
off from the higher glory of the glory-be- 
stowing multitude ? And further, if learn- 
ing should spread, would it not be cut off 
from its end? For, if a scholar's end is his 
own glory, he must devote himself to that 
end, and he will have no time or disposition 
to glorify anybody else. When all are learned, 
then, all will want glory, and none will have any 
to give. To secure the end of learning, learn- 
ing must be repressed, which is almost ridicu- 
lous. But if all practical difficulties were sur- 
mounted, there remains the question, Why 
should learning be honored at all? What 
is its merit? The very idea of honoring 
learning implies an end of learning other 
than the honor itself. 

I am sorry to detain you with supreme ends 



The Uses of Learning. 127 

which collapse in the handling. It looks so 
much like trifling with your patience. But my 
business is not to invent or suggest ends, but to 
review the most prominent of those which are 
actually regarded by old and young in the pur- 
suit of learning : and I should provoke just cen- 
sure if, in such a review, I did not give a lead- 
ing place to ends which are so generally and so 
intensely desired as material prosperity and 
personal distinction. But, while giving them 
the foremost places, which I could not deny 
unto them, I must repeat distinctly that they 
both have a radical defect in common. They 
are not compatible with the general advance- 
ment of learning. All men cannot be rich ; all 
men cannot be distinguished. The wealth and 
distinction of some imply the comparative 
poverty and obscurity of others. If these be 
the uses of learning, the uses will decrease as 
the learning increases ; and if learning ever be- 
comes universal, it will be of no use at all. The 
proper and supreme end of learning should be 
forwarded by the advancement of learning and 
fulfilled by its universal diffusion. It must, 
therefore, be something which is open to all the 
world, and which all men may enjoy together. 



128 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

Is not pleasure, then, an adequate end of 
learning? Many profess to seek learning purely 
for its own sake — that is, for the pleasure and 
satisfaction which it directly yields. They ask 
for no gold, they ask for no praise, they delight 
in learning itself. Yet they have no desire to 
keep it to themselves alone. Their pleasure is 
but heightened when others partake of it. 
The greater the company the merrier the feast. 
Is not this, at last, the end which we have been 
looking for? It must be admitted that pleas- 
ure is a legitimate object of universal desire, 
and that, while elsewhere the pleasure of one is 
too often the pain of another, learning affords 
pleasures which are open to all and which injure 
none. It is evident also that pleasure would 
organize a very comprehensive system of learn- 
ing. It would have no petty aversions or pre- 
dilections to indulge, but would welcome what- 
ever could interest the understanding, or engage 
the reason, or impress the imagination. There 
would be no childish controversy about science 
and literature, and no thought of dispensing 
with or of curtailing either. No sour, timid 
scrupulosity would impede the progress of light, 
gay, adventurous studies, and no mouthing 



The Uses of Learning. 129 

perversity would hamper the movements or 
limit the resources of men in their graver moods 
and questionings. Pious men would have to 
put up with some ribaldry, and the irreligious 
would be surprised at the rich stores of broad, 
pleasing humanities in the Scriptures ; for it is 
scarcely necessary to say that the Bible would 
be a leading text-book. The course of study, 
though comprehensive and impartial, would not 
be overloaded. Every thing pleasing would be 
represented, but only the best of every thing 
would appear. The methods of teaching would 
also be thoroughly revised. Slovenliness, pe- 
dantry, and all bungling would be done away, 
and there would be no more spending " seven 
or eight years merely in scraping together so 
much miserable Latin and Greek (or any thing 
else) as might be learned otherwise easily and 
delightfully in one year." It is further to be 
remarked that pleasure would have no difficulty 
in establishing satisfactory relations with the 
ends already considered and set aside. Money- 
making and personal distinction could cheer- 
fully do homage to pleasure, and pleasure could 
smilingly accord unto them fat places as well- 
disposed by-ends. So far so good. 



1 30 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

It must be conceded, however, that no order- 
ing of studies, and no method of teaching, could 
bring the noblest pleasures of learning to the 
early stages of our career, where they are most 
needed to wean us from the poorer delights of 
sense and indolence. The great pleasures of 
learning are on the far heights ; the steps thither, 
though not unpleasing, too often fail to allure 
us from the easier, softer path on the plain. 
" Die Hohe reizt uns, nicht die Stufen : den 
Gipfel im Auge wandeln wir gern auf der 
Ebene." Thus it comes to pass that, in a sys- 
tem whose end is pleasure, we would have to 
begin with self-denial. Having delight only in 
view, we must " scorn delights and live labo- 
rious days," to attain our end. This necessity, 
no doubt, would repel many sincere lovers of 
pleasure, and leave them all their days to such 
unlearned amusement as they might find over 
their cups or among the tangles of Neaera's hair. 
The more erect spirits would take the neces- 
sary pains and reach the heights and receive 
their reward. From the mount of speculation 
they could look forth upon all the world lying 
at their feet. They would need no wings of a 
dove to enable them to follow the setting sun 



The Uses of Learning. 1 3 1 

in his glowing career. They could follow him 
easily on the light wing of the cherub Contem- 
plation, and the sun's own glorious eye would 
be blind to many scenes of ravishing beauty 
and of awful splendor which they would be- 
hold. Their position would overlook time as 
well as space. They could watch the vague 
earth emerging from chaos and slowly advan- 
cing to a habitable age. They could share the 
mute wonder of the old creation at the advent 
of man, and they could look with the untried 
eyes of the first man upon the virgin world un- 
subdued and unexplored. They could see man 
going forth to his work, and through the long 
day they could watch the mighty fabric of hu- 
man life and civilization " rise like an exhalation " 
from infinite toil and endurance. They could be 
the close companions of heroes on each side of 
every old conflict. They could be the bosom 
friends of the wisest teachers of all schools. 
They could command the loftiest, severest 
genius to serve their pleasure. They could 
mingle for their refreshment the waters of 
Siloam with all the " thousand rills of Heli- 
con." Assuredly, for those who would take 
the necessary pains to attain them, the pleas- 
ures of learning would be inexhaustible. 



132 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

But men inured to hardship, and gifted with 
the inborn energy which enabled them to be so 
inured, and brought by their studies face to 
face with the impetuous life and passion of 
all the world, could not terminate their labors 
in mere pleasure. They could not sit and be 
amused forever in such a presence — mere spec- 
tators when the battle grew hot, mere listeners 
when the trumpet blew louder and louder. 
They would call their pleasure, trifler, as 
Hotspur called his love: 

" Away, you trifler ! — love? — I love thee not, 
I care not for thee, Kate. This is no world 
To play with mammets, or to tilt with lips ; 
We must have bloody noses, and cracked crowns, 
And pass them current too. Gods me, my horse ! " 

A life of pleasure is a reproach even on the 
lower levels of the busy earth ; on the clear 
height of knowledge, fronting all the serious 
interests of the world, it is insufferable. Men 
may rightly desire pleasure and seek it, but 
only incidentally. They cannot make it a su- 
preme end, " even though all the animals in the 
world assert the contrary." Pleasure would 
lose its own nature in such excess, and its vo- 
taries would perish of utter disgust, like poor 



The Uses of Learning. 133 

Clarence in his sweet Malmsey. Learned men 
must bear their part of the burden of life, and 
many think that the end of learning should be 
to fit men for their work in the world. " The 
greatest error of all the rest," says Lord Bacon, 
" is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or 
furthest end of knowledge. For men have en- 
tered into a desire of learning and knowledge, 
sometimes upon a natural curiosity and in- 
quisitive appetite ; sometimes to entertain their 
minds with variety and delight ; sometimes for 
ornament and reputation; and sometimes to 
enable them to victory of wit and contradic- 
tion ; and most times for lucre and profession ; 
and seldom sincerely to give a true account of 
their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of 
men : as if there were sought in knowledge a 
couch whereupon to rest a searching and rest- 
less spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and 
variable mind to walk up and down with a fair 
prospect ; or a tower of state for a proud mind 
to raise itself upon ; or a fort or commanding 
ground for strife and contention ; or a shop for 
profit or sale ; and not a rich storehouse for the 
glory of the Creator and the relief of man's 
estate." In like manner Milton writes : " I call, 



1 34 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

therefore, a complete and generous education, 
that which fits a man to perform justly, skil- 
fully, and magnanimously all the offices, both 
private and public, of peace and war." But 
what are these offices ? What is the work of 
the world, and what constitutes fitness to per- 
form it ? Are we to plunge into it at random, 
from sheer mettle and fury, like highly-fed 
steeds rushing into battle ? Would it be ful- 
filled or forwarded, or only hindered and com- 
plicated, if every man living were equipped 
with the strength of Atlas, and the hands of 
Briareus, and the eyes of Argus, and all the 
potent spells of Prospero ? Would we be fitted 
to perform our part if we could speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, and had the gift 
of prophecy, and understood all mysteries and 
all knowledge ? Though we be assured that 
the end of learning is to fit men for their work 
in the world, we are not enlightened at all until 
we know whether that work has a definite pur- 
pose, and what the purpose is, if such a pur- 
pose there be. Is our work in the world to be 
done for our own sake, or for the sake of the 
world ? If for our own sake, we still need an 
end worthier than those which we have already 



The Uses of Learning. 135 

considered ; and if for the world's sake, we must 
ask whether ends which are inadequate for our- 
selves are any better for the world. Can it be 
that we are simply to feed the world with savory 
food, and clothe it in purple and fine linen, with 
all the bright buttons and gay feathers its silly 
heart can wish? Are we only to promote its 
comfort and its self-complacency, and to 
provide for it riches, and conveniences, and 
pomps, and vanities, and some cunning con- 
trivance to keep it from strangling itself? Is 
this the work of the world, and the end of 
learning? It cannot be. The world is greater, 
not less, than ourselves. We must not offer 
the world a lame, irrational service which is 
contemptible in our own eyes ; and we must 
not drown the cry of our own hearts for a 
worthy end in our studies and our labors by 
the "drums and timbrels loud" of an aimless 
public service. But Milton says that our work 
is to be done "justly and magnanimously"; 
and Bacon says that it is to be done " for the 
glory of the Creator and for the relief of man's 
estate." That brings us to the brow of a very 
high hill, from whence we catch a glimpse of a 
new heaven and a new earth wherein we may 



136 Prejudiced Injuiries. 

discover the true end of our personal life, and 
of our public labors, and of the learning which 
is to guide and serve both. It directs us, in 
fact, to the wide realms of moral law and order 
and spiritual life, where learning may enter the 
service of duty and do the work of righteous- 
ness. Here are the " worlds unrealized," on the 
confines of which man walks about from his 
birth, and to which, in all his wanderings, his 
heart, " untravelled, fondly turns," as to its 
proper home. Here are the deep sources of 
inspiration and heroism. Here is the spring of 
comfort, more grateful to the parched lips of 
men than the water of the well of Bethlehem 
to the exhausted warrior. Here is the glory of 
the storied past, and here is all the hope of the 
future. Here, certainly, learning may find a 
worthy end if it can but rise high enough to 
reach it. Let learning lead man to his place in 
the unseen universe. Let it set him right with 
the moral law and with his own conscience. 
Let it heal the deep schism at the core of his 
life. Having accomplished that, let it aid him 
to develop his various powers, and to subdue 
the earth, and to arrange all the uses of this 
world in their due relations to the central 



The Uses of Learning. 1 3 7 

spiritual life which has been set right. This is 
a worthy end of learning. But what learning 
is worthy to lead the way to fulfil so high an 
end ? 

At the present day, we naturally turn with a 
lively hope to Science. Science has so often 
rebuked our faint hearts, and performed what 
we had pronounced impossible ; and through 
its reverent attitude toward the great cosmic 
forces it has obtained such a prophet's rod to 
work endless wonders with in future, that we 
could not help invoking its aid in the awful 
perplexities of our spiritual life. Science re- 
ceives us, in all our moral turpitude, with a 
serene, bland smile, and bids us be of good 
cheer and banish all anxiety. It bids us feed 
well, and sleep well, and be good brutes in 
every respect, and assures us that Nature will 
then attend to our moral life, and convert a 
suitable portion of our food into the highest 
virtue that she can produce at a single effort ; 
and that, if our posterity will be good brutes 
also, then, in the course of many generations, 
Nature may be depended upon to turn out a 
truly excellent spiritual life from the fruit of 
our loins, 



1 3 8 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

We will endeavor to feed well, and to sleep 
well, and to respect the whole physical order of 
the world, — the counsel is not untimely, — and 
we shall rejoice in all the good that bountiful 
Nature may do unto us. But we never blamed 
Nature ; we were never ashamed of her ; we 
never loathed her work ; neither can we take 
any credit for the good which she does now or 
may do hereafter. Our moral life begins with 
our freedom, with what we ourselves do beyond 
what Nature does for us. Let Nature do her 
utmost, the moral life is yet to come. The 
highest possible excellence of the work of Na- 
ture in us, far from insuring our moral excel- 
lence, exposes us to a more awful risk. Corruptio 
optimi pessima. Science, in its present mood, 
will not directly help our moral life, will not 
really recognize the existence of a moral life, 
good or evil. The so-called moral life, which 
science promises to those who are careful to 
observe natural laws, is not a moral life at all, 
but a natural life, — as entirely natural, in every 
sense, as the life of a plant or of a four-footed 
beast. We have no reason to complain of sci- 
ence, however. Science is earnestly endeavor- 
ing to do justice to Nature — a work, in its place, 



The Uses of Learning. 139 

quite inestimable ; and if it is deaf and blind 
and barren to our moral necessities, let us 
meekly turn elsewhere. Let us turn to Litera- 
ture. 

Here at least our moral life shall have abun- 
dant recognition. The moral life of man is, in 
fact, the greatest theme and inspiration of 
literature throughout the world. The highest 
literature is almost wholly concerned with it, 
and the very lowest cannot ignore it. But 
what is the result of all this attention ? What 
has literature done for us as moral beings ? It 
has laid bare our infirmities. It has probed 
our wounds and our putrifying sores. It has 
branded as an illiterate delusion the notion 
that all is well with mankind. It has refused 
to be comforted by the oracular babble of easy- 
going speculation, or by the nutritious gruel of 
the naturalists. It has found the evil that is 
in the world grow more hopeless in its hands 
from age to age, and, in these last days, it has 
fairly despaired of mankind. In early times, it 
marked only the monstrous, presumptuous 
sins of the notorious few. Later it discovered 
the secret faults of the many. Last of all, it 
has entered into our holiest place, and found 



1 40 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

blots and deep blemishes in our very virtues ; 
and it has taken a savage, desperate pleasure in 
dragging to the fiercest light the frailty and 
the falsehood of our inner life at its best. In 
the extremity of its awful discovery, it has tried 
to be content to wallow in the mire, and, like 
Satan, to say unto evil, " Evil be thou my good," 
or at least to rest satisfied with some secondary 
and attainable good, such as the truth of art, 
or the refinement of manners. But heaven 
and earth will pass away before man can shake 
off the moral law from his conscience, or lower 
its demands to the level of his practice : and 
literature, the voice of the world, whether in 
humility and contrition or in blasphemous 
rage or cynical bitterness, is still a heavy-laden 
confession of sin, and a condemnation of the 
human race. Literature, it is true, is full of 
hilarity and entertainment ; but, left to itself, 
it is also full of anguish and despair. It knows 
that all its beauty but thinly drapes a " dark, 
opprobrious den of shame," and that its gayety 
is but as strong drink unto him that is ready to 
perish, and unto those that be of heavy hearts, 
that they may drink and forget their poverty, 
and remember their misery no more. Litera- 



The Uses of Learning. 1 4 1 

ture will not set our moral life right, will not 
attempt to do so. But who, or what, will even 
attempt the task? The truth is, this work is 
not much sought. There are those who, with 
a clear vox pecudis, declare it needless. The 
general voice of mankind declares it hopeless. 
The Gospel of Christ alone seriously undertakes 
the task. The Gospel recognizes the evil as 
fully as the bitterest passion or the keenest 
analysis in modern literature. In entire harmony 
with the deeper tone of literature, it declares 
the evil radical, universal, and past all earthly 
remedy. But, instead of despairing or taking 
refuge in mere diversion, it proclaims salvation 
through a miracle of divine mercy and sacrifice, 
which it declares to be the central, ruling fact of 
human history, witnessed to in ancient times 
among Jews and Gentiles, and to be manifes- 
ted with increasing power in the life of man- 
kind to the end. Such a salvation would 
certainly be adequate. The life of God would 
suffice as a source of life and salvation to men ; 
and the derivation of salvation from God would 
not destroy the moral character of man's life, 
inasmuch as the appropriation is to be made, 
not through meats and drinks or any physical 



142 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

treatment, but through faith— that is, through 
the moral life itself. 

Christ is believed on in the world. With the 
belief in Him, the sense of sin grows stronger 
and clearer; the requirements of the moral law, 
far from being annulled or relaxed, appear for 
the first time in all their fulness and sacredness ; 
the fearful abyss between the soul and God 
seems wider and deeper than before. But 
though the sense of sin increases, there ac- 
companies it a sense of pardon and recon- 
ciliation with God. Though the standard of 
holiness seems higher than ever, a new hope 
has dawned upon the soul, and the battle with 
indwelling sin is waged with an earnest devo- 
tion and an assurance of final victory wholly 
unknown before. The peace within extends 
to the world without. The burdens of life 
grow lighter, and its joys more sacred. Weak- 
ness becomes strength, and loss is counted gain. 
There is no more curse. There is no more death. 
These signs follow them that believe in Christ 
in every age, and in every land, and in every 
condition of life ; and they are signs of salva- 
tion and victory. Through faith in Christ man 
is justified and renewed. His moral life is set 



The Uses of Learning. 143 

right. His true career is opened. Henceforth 
in his work in the world he will have firm 
ground to stand on. He will have clear, 
worthy aims, and the loftiest and most pow- 
erful motives, and boundless hope for himself 
and his race. If education is to fit man for his 
work in the world, then, it should certainly be a 
Christian education, including the personal faith 
which unites the conscious, voluntary life of 
man to the fountain of life, and lifts man 
himself to his place in the mighty spiritual 
evolution in which human freedom and the 
eternal power of God work together. 

Shall we, therefore, gather up our secular 
books and our implements of curious arts 
and sciences and burn them before all men, 
or " drown them deeper than did ever plum- 
met sound," and betake ourselves to our testa- 
ments and our prayers ? Shall we, in the inter- 
est of true Christian learning, abandon the uni- 
versities and set up parochial schools ? It will 
be well for us, for the sake of true learning, to 
betake ourselves with new zeal and with new 
humility to the Holy Scriptures. It will be ex- 
ceedingly well for us, for the sake of learning, 
to give ourselves unto earnest, incessant 



144 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

prayer. The maxim, Bene orasse est bene 
studuisse, was found true by holy men of old, 
and it will be found strictly true forever. It 
may be necessary to set up parochial schools, 
or missionary schools, or what not, among our 
most highly cultivated families as well as among 
the most illiterate. It is hard telling what it 
may not be necessary to do to save the parents 
of Christendom from throwing away, in utter 
wantonness or in the blindest infatuation, their 
children's noblest inheritance. But, whatever 
may have to be done, God forbid that Chris- 
tian men should dream of advancing the faith 
by neglecting secular learning. The Christian 
faith is the strongest reason there is for culti- 
vating secular learning in every direction to the 
utmost extent possible. Christ came not to de- 
stroy, but to fulfil Gentile thought and civili- 
zation as well as the law and the prophets of 
Israel. He came not to repudiate, but to re- 
deem the world for man as well as man for God. 
The secular life is a part of the field which 
the Christian life must occupy, and in which it 
must glorify God and prepare itself for heaven ; 
and Christian truth, specifically so called, far 
from diminishing, greatly increases, the dignity 



The Uses of Learning. 145 

of secular arts and sciences, by giving a new and 
profound significance to the whole secular life. 
Christian learning is not a new learning to 
supersede the old. It is the old itself, with im- 
portant additions which give a centre and a 
unity and a glorious meaning to the whole, and 
render possible, for the first time, a true classi- 
fication of the sciences and a complete organi- 
zation of human learning. Christian faith, in 
the direct proportion of its purity and strength, 
adopts and employs every thing properly hu- 
man. It knows that in our earthly life that is 
not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
natural ; and it is tender towards the natural, 
both for its own sake as the work of God's 
hands, and for the sake of the spiritual of which 
it is the harbinger. Therefore true Christian 
faith always encourages secular learning 
throughout its whole range, even though that 
learning should, for the time being, serve Chaos 
and old Night. " Destroy it not," says Faith, 
tenderly, " for there is blessing in it." The 
Christian faith of the present day is cheerfully 
paying for the board and lodging of a learning 
which, like a petulant infant, slaps it in the 
face, — of a learning which still asks if life be 



1 46 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

worth living, and whether all things are not 
founded on rottenness, — of a learning which, 
though conceited enough, has little real respect 
even for itself, and could not give a sane answer 
if asked what it is good for, or what it is that 
gives it all its might. Faith knows the end of 
learning better than learning itself till learning 
is allied to faith and so becomes Christian 
learning. 

But if faith is the devoted champion of all 
secular learning, how is learning going to be- 
come Christian, or how is Christian learning 
going to extend its bounds ? Even as Christian 
learning came into the world and made the 
conquests which it has already achieved, by the 
inspiration of the Almighty and the consecrated 
labors of faithful souls. The lively oracles are 
with us. The Great Teacher of men is ever 
near. The secret of the Lord is still with them 
that fear Him ; and He will still give the tongue 
of the learned to those who will awake morning 
by morning to hear as the learned. You may 
have the anointing from the Holy One if you 
will, and you may go forth to teach in His name. 
If you have brilliant parts, and great wealth, 
and high station, and other worldly advantages, 



The Uses of Learning. 147 

you can turn them all to good account in the 
cause of Christian truth. Yet if you have none 
of these you are not disqualified for the highest 
personal service. You may found a great school 
in your own humble home and among your 
natural associates wherever your lot is cast. 
But whether you labor with small gifts or with 
great, in a wide or in a narrow field, your eye 
must be single, your devotion entire, and you 
must walk steadfastly by faith and not by sight. 
If you find this a hard saying which you cannot 
receive, if you must fare sumptuously every day, 
and wear gorgeous apparel, and sit in the chief 
places, and receive glory of men, as the reward 
of your services, you may still do something 
for learning ; you may gather dry bones to- 
gether, and sort and combine them with admi- 
rable skill ; you may do much excellent pre- 
paratory work, but you are not the men to 
summon the mighty breath of life. 



LECTURE VIII. 

HISTORY. 

WHEN we first awake as men on the earth, 
the sun is in mid-heaven if not already declin- 
ing, and the fields are covered with men at 
work and children at play. We rub our daz- 
zled eyes in perplexity, and inquire when the 
work began, and how long the great sun has 
been up ; and we learn, bewildered, that the 
world is very old, that many generations have 
come and gone, that our fathers and mothers 
long ago awoke at mid-day like ourselves. 
Mouldering traces of former times are pointed 
out to us, and we are led through the grassy, 
voiceless little plot where the forefathers of the 
neighborhood sleep side by side, each in his low 
and narrow house. Right there, perhaps, at 
the grave of one who smiled upon our infancy, 
but departed, with a ripe harvest of love, un- 
known and unlamented by us, we begin, with 
awe and wonder, to study History. As yet, 

148 



History. 1 49 

the field of history is not much larger than the 
parish, and even in the parish itself there is a 
whole Africa which has no history at all for us. 
The parish is historical only as it is related in 
one way or another to our own family. But, 
though the field be small, the history is quick 
and powerful. It tells of labors and sufferings 
long past of which we now reap the benefit. 
It dwells with loving reverence on the courage, 
and the fortitude, and the simple, entire devo- 
tion which these quiet fields and the plain 
houses have witnessed. It reveals the true 
subject of history in human character, and the 
abiding, expanding work of the human spirit. 
It erects trophies which will not let us sleep. 
It enlists us in the continuous life of our kind, 
and directs our youthful hearts forward, already 
throbbing with vague anticipations of conflict 
and glory, or, perhaps, of martyrdom. The 
parish bounds are now too narrow for our 
awakened sympathies. We eagerly pass the 
little Rubicon into the vast domains of uni- 
versal history. No smaller field will satisfy 
our wondering curiosity ; and excited curiosity 
is more or less encouraged by sober reason, 
which intimates that the history of all man- 



1 50 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

kind is our own true history, and that it would 
be well for us to hear the whole story, not 
merely for our entertainment, but that we may 
the better know what our life is, and find out- 
places in the busy ranks, and fulfil our own 
allotted task, before we also go the way of all 
the earth. 

But if the history of all mankind is our true 
and proper history, is not history an impos- 
sible study, and must we not feel our way 
through life without its aid ? We should 
doubtless be much better qualified to do our 
own work if we understood precisely what has 
been done already, and how the work 
of the world stands. But if we must hear 
the endless story of our whole dispersed race 
before we begin our own task, will not the 
shadows of evening, when they fall, find us 
still listening to the beginning of the tale, with 
our work untouched at the hour when it should 
be completed ? It must be confessed, of course, 
that we cannot know, in detail, all that has 
been done by men upon the earth. It would 
take longer to study history so than it has 
taken to enact it, for in studying the history 
one man would have to go over all the steps 



History. i c i 

which all men have taken in making it. And if 
history is the reproduction in thought of all the 
details of the lives of those whose history is 
studied, we must pronounce impossible, not only 
universal history, but national history, and 
family history, and even individual biography. 
We know, however, that it is possible, without 
attempting literal completeness, to gain very 
helpful views of the work of individuals and 
of nations, and, by observing a few simple rules 
which the very nature and object of human 
history would suggest, the story of the whole 
race, vast as it is, may be approached, with 
hope and with profit, by ordinary people, in 
the midst of the care and labor of life. At 
present, we will not enter upon the actual study 
of universal history; but we will consider 
some of the conditions on which, in our cir- 
cumstances and with our objects, the study is 
possible. 

First of all, in a study so vast and complicate, 
it is surely indispensable that we should begin 
no further back than the beginning. The be- 
ginning of human history is not the beginning 
of all things ; and in studying history, we 
should begin, not with the origin of things, nor 



152 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

with pre-historic evolution, whether cosmical 
or biological, or other, but with the history it- 
self. In the view of human history, the dust 
from which man was made is of no more ac- 
count than any other dust ; and the animals 
which come nearest to man in the order of na- 
ture, however near they come, and whatever 
the character of their relation to him may be, 
if they are still brutes and not men, are of no 
more account than any other animals ; and if 
there ever was a time when man himself, so- 
called, played merely the part of a brute upon 
the earth, human history has nothing to do 
with such a time. Many wondrous histories 
have preceded human history, and many won- 
drous histories have always coincided with it ; 
but when the career of man, as man, began, it 
was a new-created world ; and ever since it be- 
gan, though not unrelated to the other devel- 
opments of the earth and of the universe, it 
has been a distinct movement. The study of 
human history is the study of this distinct 
movement, not the study of collateral or pre- 
ceding facts. I have no wish to see those facts 
ignored or neglected. I have no wish to deny 
or question their important relations to human 



History. 1 5 3 

history. At a proper time and place those 
facts should be studied, and their bearings 
upon history expounded ; but they should not 
be placed at the threshold, to bar our approach 
to the proper facts of history, or to dominate 
our interpretation of them. The life and work 
of man, as man, constitute the subject of his- 
tory. Let the study of history not begin else- 
where, neither let it turn aside from this its 
proper subject. 

Then, when we have the actual life and work 
of mankind before us, though universal history 
is our ultimate end, we must begin with some 
particular portion of the history, and we must 
proceed toward the universal gradually, and in 
some definite order. I have already said that 
we begin with our own family ; and I may say 
that we must also proceed with our own family, 
and that our solid advance in universal history 
will follow the lines of the enlargement of our 
tent, and of the establishment of real, effective 
relations with our fellow-men. For history is 
the history of our own kind, — of the body of 
which we are members ; and we cannot proper- 
ly learn the history except so far as we realize 
the unity of the body. We have reached, it is 



154 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

true, a theoretical belief in the solidarity of the 
human race ; and we naturally rush into un- 
bounded cosmopolitan and eclectic schemes 
based on that theoretical solidarity. Such 
schemes cannot altogether lose their reward, 
for they are based on what is fundamentally 
true. But the practical disorganization of the 
human race is as much a fact as its theoretical 
unity ; and the very thought of unity is but 
the result of the orderly providential advance, 
through ages of separate national development, 
towards practical unification. The unification 
is still far from complete ; and its progress in 
future will doubtless depend on the tenacity 
and self-respect, not on the laxity and ser- 
vility, of the common life gradually attained. 
The old Greek pride in Hellas, the jealous, 
separate life of the seed of Abraham, the Ro- 
man devotion to the city, and the free seclusion 
of the German forest, were all necessary for the 
practical unification of mankind. In the fulness 
of time, Greek and Hebrew and Roman and 
Teuton, not of their own accord, but by the 
over-ruling will of Heaven, united their accumu- 
lated riches, and became the common spiritual 
heads of our family of nations. Our study of uni- 



History. 155 

versal history must begin with the life and work 
of our own people, and of these their spiritual 
ancestors. Other peoples have their history. 
There are no unhistorical nations, in Africa or 
elsewhere. The Hebrews were Barbarians to 
the Greeks, and the Greeks were Gentiles to the 
Hebrews. The call of Abraham was unknown 
in Athens, and the Dorian migration in Jeru- 
salem. Each race might seem utterly unhistori- 
cal to the other ; but each had a great history 
in progress, and now the smallest details in the 
life of each seem full of significance to the 
world. All nations of the earth have historical 
significance, and the significance of all will some 
day be apparent. But, for all that, we must not 
go to glean scattered ears of history in distant 
fields until we have first gathered our own har- 
vest. The history of our own people, and of those 
who have poured their life into ours, is thrust 
upon us at every turn, in our own tongue, al- 
most from our birth. Like wisdom, it standeth 
in the top of high places, by the way in the 
places of the paths. It crieth at the gates, at 
the entry of the city, at the coming in at the 
doors, and we ought to have very strong rea- 
sons if Ave turn away from a history so mani- 



156 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

festly set before us by nature, to study another 
at every disadvantage. But what reason can 
we have for our preference when we are igno- 
rant both of what we neglect and of what we 
choose ? 

Our own family history not only invites our 
first and earnest attention by its nearness, but 
also rewards all the attention we bestow upon 
it by its wealth and nobleness. It is exceeding- 
ly rich in all that we should look for in history. 
It would itself make a not unworthy universal 
history if there were no more. It supplies the 
elements of a great, strong, beautiful, inde- 
structible life. With these elements held fast, 
and held in their due relations to one another, 
we might well be satisfied with our own united 
world, without Ethiopia or Cathay. But seeing 
that Ethiopia and Cathay exist, this same his- 
tory of ours assures us that there are new riches 
for the world to be gathered there also ; and it 
sends us thither, not empty-handed, nor at all 
disposed to barter away what we have for what 
we may find ; not to enter a new world, nor to 
learn over again the first principles of human 
life and history, but to proclaim the principles 
and history of our own world, and to add new 



History. 157 

provinces to it. The new provinces are not empty- 
handed any more than ourselves. They too 
have long and sacred histories, and they will not 
be annexed without stubborn resistance. But, 
in the struggle, we shall draw nearer and nearer 
to one another, and the converging lines of a 
world-wide purpose will meet, and we shall 
know one another, and be one people, with one 
great future and one marvellous past. Thus, a 
firm, loyal hold upon our own American history, 
with all that lies behind it, is the best start in 
universal history, and the surest pledge that 
there will be no turning aside and no delaying 
until the goal is reached. 

It must be admitted that our own history, as 
defined above, is still vast enough to confound 
us ; that, although thrust upon us from child- 
hood, it easily eludes our unwary or over-am- 
bitious grasp, and leaves in our hands mere 
heaps of worn-out clothing. In view of this 
fact, and of the rich variety of the history, we 
are often tempted to renounce our claim to the 
whole, and to devote ourselves to some modest 
portion which we may hope to make entirely 
our own. Alas ! we may hope to make a mod- 
est portion of our own history, taken all by it- 



158 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

self, entirely our own, just as we might hope to 
make a living branch our own without the 
vine, or a hand or foot without the body. 
The attempt is quite commonly made. We 
have among us earnest Judaisers who zeal- 
ously sacrifice all secular history, and brilliant 
Hellenisers who sacrifice gayly all but secular 
history. We have more than a Heptarchy of 
sturdy settlers on various sections and sub-sec- 
tions of our common British history. We 
have our own Yankee purists always gather- 
ing the precious dust of Plymouth Rock. We 
have a few noble devotees of the submerged 
Dutch settlements ; and I know not how many 
more isolated tribes we have, all abandoning 
wider inquiry and devoting themselves to thor- 
oughness in their chosen provinces. We must 
admire their talents, and their enthusiasm, and 
their industry ; and we doubt not but they will 
all help to enrich our common life, for they all 
labor in our own mines. But they have no part 
in our common life themselves. They are cut 
off from among their people, and scattered 
among the nations of a by-gone world. We are 
neither Greeks nor Jews, but we are the heirs 
of both, and of all Europe, and we are pro- 



History. 159 

faner persons than Esau if we propose to di- 
vide our inheritance, though the separate por- 
tions be magnificent, and though the care of the 
whole be very onerous. It is well to have some 
little homestead, all our own, in the midst of 
our people, whether it be by Plymouth Rock 
or in Sleepy Hollow. It is well to survey and 
enjoy the riches of our common history as 
settled dwellers in some portion of the land, 
not as roving gypsies. It is well to command 
the spacious past from the eminence of special 
tastes and aptitudes and opportunities. But if 
we must ignore our country because we own a 
farm, it would be better for us to be, like the 
tribe of Levi, without an allotment among our 
brethren ; and if special tastes and aptitudes 
must detach us from the great combined cur- 
rents in our history, it would be better for us 
to throw our privileges to the winds and take 
our chances with the multitude. 

The chances of the multitude, indeed, are ex- 
cellent. For, though our history is too great 
to be completely mastered by any, it is yet 
so truly our own that, for the highest purposes, 
it is within the reach of all. The great move- 
ments of history have registered themselves 



1 60 Preju diced Inqu tries. 

for our perusal, not in a prosy, pedantic, inter- 
minable day-book, vainly attempting to keep 
up with all events and put everything bodily on 
record, but in great views, from commanding 
points along the route, from whence the inter- 
vening path is clear and the work of a thousand 
years may manifest itself in one day. The 
selection of the points of view, and the prepa- 
ration of the " optic glass " of genius or inspira- 
tion, through which alone we can see the great 
sight, belong to the same power that impels 
and directs the historic movements themselves. 
When history thus writes itself, it writes, with 
large, Pentecostal freedom, for the great body 
of the people. It leaves plenty of work for 
scholars to do, by way of criticism and sub- 
sidiary investigation. But, in the end, the 
inspired popular history, " for substance of 
doctrine," remains our best and truest his- 
tory. It marks with unerring instinct the 
great steps which mankind have taken, and 
it points with masterly force to the lessons of 
history. 

For history, let it be remembered, is not a 
medley of promiscuous facts to exercise the 
memory or to be told over for a pastime. Uni- 



History. 1 6 1 

versal history evidently has a meaning. Its 
facts fall into a profound, significant order ; 
and the interpretation of that order is of great 
moment, not only in the prosecution of our 
studies, but also in the conduct of life. The 
interpretation, whatever it be, must agree with 
the facts, and should, if possible, be framed out 
of the facts themselves, or, at least, in full view 
of them, and, particularly, in full view of the most 
profoundly and distinctively human of them. 
If you construct your philosophy of history in 
retirement, out of your ruminations on the 
capabilities of atoms, or out of some fruitful 
abstract idea which has taken possession of 
you, and then proceed to fit it to the facts of 
history, woe be unto those facts ! For I know 
you, — that you are men of great decision of 
character, and that when you once have your 
philosophy all ready, it will seem to you much 
more reasonable to mutilate and suppress facts 
wholesale than to consign a great philosophy, 
the offspring of your love and travail, to the 
dishonored limbo of abortions and failures. In 
truth, some of the commonest operations in 
philosophies of history are the torturing and 
brow-beating of plain facts, especially of the 



1 6 2 Prejudiced Inqtc tries. 

noblest facts of human history, to induce 
them to submit to a fore-ordained interpreta- 
tion, and the resolute strangling of facts that 
prove altogether intractable. It will be ad- 
mitted that such proceedings are irregular. 
The interpretation of history, therefore, must 
not be imported from natural science, or from 
abstract speculation. It must be borne in upon 
our souls by the historical facts themselves. 
History, if it has a meaning, must be allowed 
to speak for itself and declare its meaning. We 
should expect it, of course, to live peaceably in 
the same world with demonstrated science and 
rational metaphysics. But it has an initiative 
of its own ; and it is too much to assume that 
it will not sometimes astonish and perplex the 
astutest theorists by insisting on certain preg- 
nant articles of its own devising in the set- 
tlement with the physical sciences and with 
metaphysical speculation. 

But, while protesting against prejudging the 
course of history at the bidding of sciences 
and philosophies which have no necessary 
jurisdiction in the matter, I must myself do 
homage to one fore-ordained condition of all 
human interpretation of history. We must 



History. 163 

interpret history, not from without, but from 
within ; not as mere students and spectators 
who have only to observe and interpret, but as 
men who have their life to live in history. 
Quorum pars magna fui, every human soul 
may say, at the last, of the events of history ; 
and no interpretation of history is pertinent 
or valid to us which we may not practically 
and fully recognize as the final interpretation 
and rule of our own life. 

Now, however little we may know of history, 
and however little we may be able to anticipate 
the actual form and power of its lessons, it is 
reasonable to presume that we know something 
of ourselves, and of what we need to learn, and, 
especially, of what we do not need and cannot 
afford to learn, either from history or from any 
other source. Shall we consider for a moment, 
then, in a general way, what the practical les- 
sons may be which we would desire to learn, or 
consent under any circumstances to learn, from 
the philosophy of history, or the science of his- 
tory, or whatever else we may choose to call 
our interpretation of historical facts ? 

Shall we learn to prostrate ourselves help- 
lessly and carelessly before the forces which 



1 64 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

work with such precision in history ? Shall we 
eat and drink, and be as merry as we can, and 
leave all the serious work of the world to the 
cunning atoms and the overruling fates ? Shall 
the science of history harden our hearts, and 
sear our consciences as with hot iron, and re- 
move from us every burden and every yoke ex- 
cepting only the yoke and the burden of irre- 
sistible coercion ? Shall we learn to renounce 
all purpose, and all endeavor, and all hope, and 
divest ourselves of every human quality, and be 
mere clay in the hands of brutish potters? 
Can this, or any thing in any way approaching 
to this, ever be the final lesson of history, how- 
ever scientific or philosophical history may 
prove to be ? 

Or shall we learn the very reverse of this, — 
shall we master the secrets of the vast organism 
so thoroughly that the fixed concatenation of 
events, far from appalling and paralyzing us, 
shall be the very means to deliver the world 
into our hands, and to make us, if we can keep 
our fellow-historians from meddling, absolute 
dictators in the life of the human race ? Shall 
we learn to anticipate all seeming contingencies, 
and to see the end from the beginning; or, 



History. 165 

rather, to determine the end ourselves, and to 
guarantee the whole future, fixing to-morrow's 
good and evil, and shepherding at our will the 
countless flocks of unborn souls? Shall we 
learn from the science of history to aspire thus 
or " beyond thus high " ? If we dare not think 
either of controlling and supporting the history 
of our race, or of growing indifferent to it and 
surrendering our life to be moulded by the mass 
of external influences, would we be willing to 
learn from the philosophy of history, first and 
above all, the old-fashioned lessons of faith and 
piety ? Would we be willing to find these old 
lessons grow more impressive with increasing 
knowledge, illustrated and confirmed even when 
boldly set aside, with apparent advantage and 
with the approval of great sages, by the most 
effective characters in history, the scourges and 
hammers of God, who are themselves set aside 
in due time and brought down to the sides of 
the pit ? We would be willing enough to learn 
the old lessons, we almost hear ourselves reply, 
if .they could be made out rationally from his- 
tory ; but we are not willing, whatever the les- 
son may be, to see history interpreted by means 
of theology. And yet why not ? Perhaps the 



1 6 6 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

application of theology, and Christian theology 
at that, to the interpretation of history is not 
only legitimate but necessary. Christian theol- 
ogy is not a product of speculation. The 
Christian creed is a historical statement, cover- 
ing long periods and the gravest events in the 
life of the race. If true, it is obviously most 
momentous ; and those who believe it must 
interpret all history in its light. Those who do 
not believe it to be true are not at liberty to 
discard it altogether ; for, even if Christian the- 
ology in its current form be not strictly true, 
still it can only be a more or less incorrect 
statement of a portion of human history so 
vital and commanding that without it no toler- 
able interpretation of the whole can be possible. 
Those who dispute the accuracy of the old 
statement are welcome to correct it. Let them 
write the life of Jesus, and the history of the 
Christian Church, or rather the history of the 
Christian life upon the earth. When they have 
done, the result will be a revised Christian the- 
ology, which they must employ in their inter- 
pretation of all history. 

And, meanwhile, Christian theology, in its 
accepted form, furnishes, what we nowhere 



History. 167 

else find, an interpretation of history at once 
complete and adequate to the magnitude of the 
facts, and charged with mighty and beneficent 
working power. If any, failing to perceive the 
strictly historical character of the Christian rev- 
elation, fail also to recognize the legitimacy of its 
interpretation of history, it may not be amiss 
to remind them that, even if that interpreta- 
tion be not accepted as authoritative, still, the 
questions which it raises are questions which 
all history raises, and which must be settled 
definitely in any worthy interpretation of 
history, but which are neither settled nor in a 
way to be settled anywhere apart from the 
Christian revelation ; and not only so, but that 
a settlement of them is impossible, and there- 
fore the interpretation of history also is im- 
possible, unless history itself contains some 
such means of settlement as the Christian 
Scriptures furnish ; or unless we allow to faith 
and hope a far greater place in the settlement 
than even Christianity itself demands for them ; 
or, on the other hand, leave every thing to our 
senses and our ignorance, which would be a turn- 
ing away from the questions at issue rather 
than a settlement of them. The questions are 



1 68 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

such as, whether human history on the earth 
is a part or a whole ; whether all the power and 
the direction of it are in itself, or whether it be 
dependent on the counsels and will of God ; 
whether its interests and its issues are bounded 
by the earth and the breath in man's nostrils, 
or whether it be but a beginning, looking to a 
spiritual consummation in eternity. Human 
history, throughout its whole course, persis- 
tently raises these questions ; and they, with 
other similar questions which necessarily follow 
them, are, beyond all comparison, the weightiest 
questions concerning our history : and to in- 
terpret history without deciding them is to 
leave the whole task to be performed over 
again. 

But how are such questions to be answered ? 
Can they be answered at all? If God has sent 
forth His Son, in our nature, to take part in our 
history, and has, from the beginning even until 
now, by His Spirit, borne witness to His Son, in 
the midst of history itself, the answer is clear. 
Human history on the earth is not complete 
in itself; and it is not completed even by 
the inclusion of all the physical conditions 
which affect it. It depends directly upon the 



History. 1 69 

wisdom and the power and the redeeming love 
of God, as well as upon the will of man and 
the apparent necessities of his nature and con- 
dition. It is connected with a spiritual order 
extending far beyond itself, and its goal is in 
a spiritual life beyond the grave. All races and 
all generations are alike included in the divine 
plan, and the end for all is to grow up unto 
Him in all things, which is the head, even 
Christ. 

Ignoring or disputing the great historical 
facts which are gathered up in Christian the- 
ology, we have still the answer of human faith 
and reason, implied in the persistent raising of 
the questions in the face of all darkness and 
shadows of death. The human race looks for 
the sympathy and aid of spiritual powers, as 
well as for the co-operation of natural forces, in 
working out its destiny ; and it cannot willingly 
let all that it inherits, and all that it achieves, 
perish everlastingly. Desertion and destruction 
seem to it unreasonable, and too bad to be 
true ; and if it cannot find Providence and the 
promise of eternal life in the facts of history, 
it will yet trust the larger and better hope, 
hoping against hope, and trusting against ap- 



1 70 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

parent facts, counting the reasonable alone for 
ever true. This simple faith, which finds no 
external warrant in the course of history, will 
furnish a general and somewhat misty and 
wavering answer to the questions stated above ; 
but it will not enable us to proceed to the in- 
terpretation of the actual facts of history. It 
finds no light in the facts, and it brings none to 
them. It maintains itself apart from them and 
in spite of them. Faith is itself, indeed, a his- 
torical fact of the greatest consequence ; but, 
cut loose from all other facts, it cannot interpret 
history, though it be strong enough to remove 
mountains. 

If we not only reject the Christian history, 
but also separate ourselves from all the faith of 
mankind in the spiritual environment and the 
eternal issues of our earthly life, we have 
nothing at all to say in answer to the questions 
which have been proposed. We cannot be ex- 
pected to prove that God and immortality are 
impossible ; and our personal opinion in such a 
matter is not worth mentioning for any phil- 
osophical purpose. The questions must be left 
open ; and if we still must have an interpreta- 
tion of history, it must be an interpretation 



History. 171 

which does not depend on such questions — that 
is, it must be an interpretation which will be 
equally full and valid whether the history 
which we interpret be a part, a mere beginning, 
or a whole, complete in itself, and whether its 
significance be inconsiderable or infinite. 



LECTURE IX. 

PHILOSOPHY. 

" Philosophy," said one who in his day 
passed for a great philosopher, " was never 
made for the people. We have never cared to 
enlighten cobblers and maid-servants. That 
is the work of apostles." 

We belong to the society of cobblers and 
maid-servants, though we have to follow many 
other occupations. We are thankful even for 
a place among the people, and we can never 
forget our immense indebtedness to the 
apostles. But we should be very glad, neverthe- 
less, to be permitted to have some interest in 
philosophy, and to be in some humble measure 
enlightened by it, if it were but possible. We 
will not have the impertinence to claim acquaint- 
ance with a subject not intended for us. But 
we have always heard the great fame of philos- 
ophy, for that has gone forth into all the world. 
It murmured in our ears like Apollo's lute when 

172 



Philosophy. 1 73 

we were yet in our cradles, and we have ever 
since heard it gladly and with unwavering faith. 
We have never received against philosophy the 
reproaches of mean detractors, nor ever had any 
respect for the evil forebodings of chattering 
soothsayers, who announce that its last hour 
is at hand, if not already come. Slighted and 
rejected as we are, and disqualified to speak 
more openly, we may still say of philosophy as 
Consuelo said of art : Je vons le dirai quandje 
le comprendrai bien moi mhne ; mats cest quelqiie 
chose de grande, rCen doutez pas ! 

Being thus perfectly tractable, and so well 
affected towards philosophy that we are pre- 
pared to bless it meekly, even if it must exclude 
us in a body from its groves and its porches 
and from all its bounds, we hope it will not be 
presumption, but a further mark of good-will 
on our part, if, instead of hurrying into gloomy, 
hopeless exile, at the mere suggestion of what 
may, after all, prove to be the unauthorized im- 
pudence of individual philosophers, we seek to 
ascertain definitely whether we really are placed 
under the ban of philosophy itself or not. We 
cannot attribute any thing arbitrary or irrational 
to philosophy. If we are shut out it is for suf- 



1 74 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

ficient reasons, for reasons grounded in the very 
nature of things. This fact greatly simplifies 
our present task. We are to inquire whether 
there be any fixed, inexorable reasons why the 
people, including cobblers and maid-servants 
and ourselves, should have neither part nor lot 
in philosophy. 

We are aware that philosophy is a most diffi- 
cult, most laborious pursuit, wholly unfit for 
indolent, effeminate minds. But that is no 
reason why its doors should be closed against 
the people. The indolent, effeminate minds, 
like the men who wear soft clothing, are found 
mostly in privileged places. The people have 
no opportunity to be effeminate. They are 
bred amidst the severities of camps, and the 
hardships of continual sieges and battle-fields. 
Energy and endurance and ever-wakeful intelli- 
gence are necessaries of life to them day by 
day. If philosophy is to be taken by force or 
by untiring patience, the people are prepared 
both to labor and to wait for it. But perhaps 
there are difficulties in the way, against which 
general force of mind and honest labor can 
avail nothing. What are the particular difficul- 
ties which the people must encounter, whether 



Philosophy. 1 75 

successfully or unsuccessfully, if they make a 
serious attempt to gain a foothold in philos- 
ophy? 

It has sometimes been supposed that the 
chief difficulty is a confusion of tongues. 
Philosophy, it is frequently said, speaks a 
strange, forbidding language of its own ; 
noWai pisv yXoorrai 6vr/TOiS y /xia 6' adava- 
roiaiv : many are the dialects of men, but 
the language of philosophers is one. The lan- 
guage of philosophers may be largely made up, 
it is thought, out of the languages of men ; and 
divers scraps of undigested Greek and German, 
and even of plain English, may undoubtedly be 
found here and there among its more original 
elements. But, the allegation continues, Eng- 
lish and German and Greek alike forget their 
native cunning upon entering this service, and 
become unapproachable strangers and aliens to 
the children of their people. 

This view of the matter perhaps is not with- 
out some measure of justification. But, on the 
whole, I am disposed to believe that it is incor- 
rect or greatly exaggerated. At any rate, noth- 
ing can be more evident than the fact that 
many of the philosophers, even if they have 



ij6 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

an occult language of their own for profes- 
sional use, are yet able to speak the languages 
of men with singular grace and power when so 
disposed. Some of these duoglot or polyglot 
philosophers have strong popular sympathies, 
and they might, doubtless, be induced to trans- 
late philosophy into the vernacular languages 
out of the original philosophic tongue, if such 
a tongue there be ; or they might even be per- 
suaded to bridge the chasm between the people 
and philosophy for all time by issuing complete 
grammars and dictionaries of the philosophic 
speech in the tongues of the vulgar. Then the 
patient cobblers who have mastered Sanskrit 
and Chinese would quickly get hold of philos- 
ophy also, and the reproach of the people 
would be taken away. I only wish we could 
be sure that the difficulties of philosophy are 
merely or mainly linguistic. In that case, dic- 
tionary or no dictionary, we should advance to 
the attack with the greatest cheerfulness in the 
world. 

But what could we do if it should turn out 
that philosophy, whatever language it may 
speak, discourses of things or of the shadows 
of things, which we have not faculties to take 



Philosophy. iyy 

a 

cognizance of ? What if philosophy has not a 
peculiar dialect merely, but also a distinct 
world of its own, sufficient in itself and safe 
from all intrusion, in some inconceivable fourth 
or n th dimension of space, or in a weltering 
abyss of impersonal mind far deeper and 
darker than Tartarus? The surmise has 
been afloat for two thousand years and more, 
that real philosophers never know any thing 
that other people know ; that they cannot 
even find their way about the streets with- 
out tumbling into wells and basements; that 
they do not know whether their neighbors 
are men or horned cattle ; that they are igno- 
rant of the laws of their country, indifferent to 
the welfare of their people, and wholly uncon- 
cerned about the prospects of the great globe 
itself ; that at their own homes they are regu- 
larly "within and not within" at the same 
time, their puzzled visages entertaining their 
friends while their minds are raising " many a 
towered structure high " beyond the utmost 
verge of being. What could we do if these 
ancient and modern surmises should prove 
well founded ? And how can we tell whether 
they are well founded or not ? 



178 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

Perhaps the bare statement of such a diffi- 
culty in the study of philosophy is sufficient to 
prove its unreality, and to discover its origin 
in the flustered, half-awakened minds of those 
to whom the whole universe means just what 
they can see, and who really believe only what 
they can " hold in their hands." As compared 
with the mere world of sense, the world which 
men have in common with sheep and oxen, 
philosophy assuredly has another spacious 
world of its own. On the other hand, philoso- 
phers are but men ; and the boldest philosophy, 
being but the work of the human mind, can 
never pass the barriers of the mind's proper 
sphere. 

" Whatsoever here befalls, 
You in the region of yourself remain, 
Neighboring on heaven ; and that no foreign land." 

And in this region, where philosophy must 
find all its matter and do all its work, we also 
dwell at large, with a full title to its best 
springs and to " every fertile inch of the 
island." The world of philosophy can be no 
other than the actual world of human experi- 
ence. Philosophy cannot make facts, cannot 
monopolize facts, cannot make facts void. It 



Philosophy. I jg 

must start from nothing and bring forth noth- 
ing, or be content to occupy itself with the 
common heritage of mankind. This is the 
ground of our lingering hope that philosophy 
may yet make common cause with the bulk of 
the people, and not use the substance of all 
men to make a Belshazzar's feast for a thou- 
sand lords. 

At all events, here we are now, cobblers, and 
maid-servants, and philosophers, all together, 
face to face with the same great world of 
manifold human experience. Here we must all 
start, however our paths may hereafter diverge. 
And the general question for us all would seem 
to be, what we are to make of this whole actual 
world to which we have been born. This must 
be. the great question for the philosophers; 
and it is certainly the sum of all questions for 
the people. Can there be more than one com- 
plete, final, satisfactory answer to such a ques- 
tion ? Or can there be two totally different 
ways whereby the philosophers and the people 
may separately reach the same sole answer ? 

We shall probably be told that we must dis- 
tinguish between philosophy and life ; that the 
people may learn from " apostles," or perchance 



1 80 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

by this time from less exacting teachers, pos- 
sibly even from plain common-sense, what they 
must make of the world practically in the con- 
duct of life ; while philosophers cannot rest in 
the mere practical use of the world, but must 
'seek a clear, comprehensive view of the ground 
and constitution of the world itself. We are 
sensible of the paramount claims of life upon 
us, and of our urgent need of practical direc- 
tions. We also see clearly that the greater 
leisure of the philosophers entitles them to a 
fuller gratification of merely speculative crav- 
ings than we can ever aspire to. We are as far 
as possible from begrudging them that fuller 
speculative gratification. We are well content 
that the philosophers should have all the toil 
and all the reward of investigations which have 
no serious bearing upon life. But if philoso- 
phy attains a true view of the world, does not 
that view necessarily carry with it the true, im- 
perative rule of life which we all need ? If, on 
the other hand, we find a rule of life elsewhere, 
how are we to know whether it be a good rule 
that will always hold or not, unless wcare mas- 
ters of a well-established theory of the world, 
by which all rules must be justified ? 



Ph ilosophy. 1 8 1 

Thus, philosophy and life, however carefully 
we may distinguish between them, walk right 
over our distinctions into each other's arms ; 
and the philosophers and the people, unless 
the people are to build on the sand in the con- 
duct of life, must be united, not only in start- 
ing with the actual world of human experience, 
but also in seeking a rational explanation of 
that actual world. The main question which 
we are considering, then, whether the people at 
large, including ourselves, can have any part in 
the labor and profit of philosophy, will depend 
on the possibility of agreement betwedn the 
people and the philosophers as to what consti- 
tutes a rational explanation. If they agree in 
this, they are looking for the same thing ; and 
the labors of far-seeing, deep-thinking philoso- 
phers cannot fail to benefit the people, whether 
the people, in their turn, can render any assist- 
ance to the philosophers or not. 

What, then, would satisfy both the philoso- 
phers and ourselves in an explanation of the 
world of experience ? We will make bold to an- 
swer for the philosophers that they would be 
satisfied with an explanation which gave such 
an account of the world as would make it un- 



1 8 2 Prejtidiced Inqu tries. 

reasonable to inquire further for any other 
account of it. We are happy to say also that 
we ourselves would not be satisfied with less. 
If our reason, as reason, has a right to ask any 
questions, it has a right to ask all the questions 
which seem necessary to it. If our reason, as 
reason, is to be baffled and suppressed at all, it 
may as well be suppressed at the beginning as 
at the end. As long as reason demands more 
explanation, more explanation is necessary, 
whether it be forthcoming or not. Reason 
will not compromise. It must be fully satis- 
fied. So much both the philosophers and our- 
selves must require. The philosophers surely 
will require no more. Neither will we require 
any more. When we find such an account of 
the world as we here demand, it shall be our 
law and gospel as well as our philosophy. We 
shall seal the sincerity of our speculative con- 
viction by committing ourselves in practice 
wholly and forever to the view of the world 
which has met all the demands of our reason. 
May we not say that the philosophers, a for- 
tiori, will do the same ? 

Let us now consider whether we can for- 
mulate the demands of our reason, and state 



Ph ilosophy. 183 

an ultimatum beyond which it would not 
be reasonable to ask for another explanation 
of the world. I think I may say that if 
we can take the world, the entire world 
of human experience, and, pointing out the 
mutual relations of all its various orders of 
facts, demonstrate it to be a systematic, com- 
plete, independent whole, natura naturans and 
natura naturata all in one, our task will be 
done, and reason will ask for no further expla- 
nation. Reason will have seen all of any con- 
sequence that there is to see. There will be 
room afterwards, of course, for examination of 
details ad libitum, but there will be no great 
questions left to be asked. Some irrepressible 
bunglers would, perhaps, even then have some- 
thing to say about first cause, and final cause, 
and so forth ; but reason knows that it is the 
height of unreason to seek the first cause, or the 
final cause, of a complete and entirely indepen- 
dent whole, anywhere outside of that whole 
itself. If we can demonstrate the unity and 
complete independence of our actual world, and 
show the relations of its parts, the world is ex- 
plained. The final word is spoken. 

But if all our efforts in that direction should 



1 8 4 Prejudiced Inqtn'ries. 

fail ; if it should become more and more appar- 
ent that our world of experience is not a whole 
but a part, and a rough-hewn, unfinished part 
at that ; and that in our world, such as it is, 
there are strong suggestions of things which 
most deeply concern it, and may be in it, but 
are not of it, nor all confined within it, what 
then ? Must reason still demand that our 
world be interpreted as an independent whole, 
though it is conceded not to be such a whole ? 
Or will reason demand that, in order to explain 
what is before us now, all that is and all that is 
to be, shall be delivered into our hands forth- 
with, though that may well be understood to 
be impossible and even unreasonable ? Will 
not reason rest contented when that which is 
but a part is explained as a part, especially if 
the relation of the part to the whole which 
reaches beyond it be indicated, though, from 
the nature of the case, the whole itself, which 
is largely beyond our experience, cannot be 
made known ? Pascal's saying will then prove 
true : "La derniere d-marche de la raison est de 
reconnaitre qiiil y a une infinite' de choses qui la 
surpassent. Elle n'est que faible si elle ne va 
jusqua connaitre cela" 



Ph ilosophy. 1 8 5 

It is very common, I am well aware, to scoff 
at all such explanations of the world, in the 
lump, as mere religious impressions and not 
rational explanations at all. " No one who is 
religious," says Schopenhauer, " arrives as far 
as philosophy ; he does not require it. No one 
who really philosophizes is religious." " The 
contentment with the regress to a God- 
Creator, or a surrogate of the same," says Ed- 
uard von Hartmann, " is the proper mark of 
speculative indolence." These gentlemen are 
perfectly right if it be possible to prove that 
the world which we know is a complete and in- 
dependent whole, beginning, continuing, and 
ending in itself. On the other hand, if not 
that, but the very reverse of that, be proved, 
then no one who philosophizes to any purpose 
will fail to arrive at religion ; questions about 
first cause and final cause beyond the limits of 
our world will be pressed by reason itself ; and 
it may be in order for the most energetic 
thinkers to speak, not of the regress, but of the 
advance, to God-Creator. Reason itself, finding 
no other refuge or resting-place, will order that 
advance, and thereby secure an explanation of 
the world which it can recognize as final. 



1 8 6 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

Here is our ultimatum then. If the world 
be independent, show its systematic unity and 
completeness ; prove its independence, and ex- 
hibit its internal order. That will satisfy reason 
perfectly, and no further question can be asked. 
If the world is not complete in itself or inde- 
pendent, show its incompleteness and depend- 
ence ; and, if possible, give such an indication 
of that on which it depends as will reveal the 
true order and law of the world. That also 
will satisfy reason completely. 

But, while either of these explanations, if 
fairly compassed, would be perfectly rational 
and conclusive, it is clear that only one of them 
can be actually possible. Each of them rigor- 
ously excludes the other. If the world is inde- 
pendent, it cannot be explained as dependent. 
If it is dependent, it cannot be explained as in- 
dependent. The philosophers have a predilec- 
tion for one of the two explanations, and the 
people are deeply prejudiced in favor of the 
other. But which of the two is to prevail, 
proof alone must decide. The philosophers 
quite generally assume that everybody ought 
to see that the proof is on their side ; and they 
have no patience with anybody that fails to 



Philosophy. 187 

see it at a glance. " My age," says one of the 
great thinkers already mentioned, " after the 
teaching of Bruno, Spinoza, and Schelling, had 
perfectly understood that all things are but 
one ; but the nature of that unity, and the 
rationale of its appearance as plurality, were re- 
served for me to explain." And so he explains 
and explains, and so they all explain and ex- 
plain, with deep insight and with brilliant ela- 
boration, but without helping us in the least to 
grasp the proof, deemed by them so easy, 
"that all things are but one." Perhaps it is 
right here that the philosophers mean to leave 
us in the lurch. They have the proof of the 
unity of all things under their thumbs, and they 
will keep it there. They know, but they will 
not tell. 

The matter, however, concerns us all so 
nearly that, with all our veneration for phil- 
osophers, and with the most humbling sense 
of our incompetence to supply what they omit, 
we must challenge the assumption that all 
things have been proved to be but one ; and 
we must endeavor to see where the proof is to 
come from, though we could never undertake 
to find it ourselves. 



1 88 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

Some of us have probably thought that it 
was surely coming from the physical sciences, 
which investigate the order of the material 
world, revealing therein a unity so vast in its 
reach and so subtle in its arrangements that at 
first it captivates the mind entirely, and seems 
to enfold all things in an indissoluble embrace. 
But when we recover from our first scientific 
transport, we not only miss the proof that 
all things are one, but we are aware that the 
proof will never come through the physical 
sciences at least. These sciences take pains, 
if I may so speak, to leave ample room for an- 
other world, on which all the world which they 
investigate may ultimately depend. They os- 
tentatiously repudiate all knowledge of causes 
within their own sphere. They know not what 
a day may bring forth before their eyes. The 
unity which they find in the world with which 
they have to do has, in their view, nothing 
necessary or universal about it. It is vast and 
imposing, and it has lasted a good while ; but it 
is entirely unaccounted for, and devoid of any 
rational bond to guarantee its permanence. 
And this unity, accidental and insecure as it 
is, does not include the whole world of human 



Philosophy. 1 89 

experience. It does not wholly include even 
a single portion, great or small, of our actual 
experience. In all experience there is a dual- 
ity, which the most advanced science is as pow- 
erless to reduce as the most rudimentary. 
With any amount of knowledge, and with any 
theory of knowledge, there must always be 
that which knows as well as that which is 
known. We may strip the mind of its old- 
fashioned substance and state ; we may give 
it the chariest, most diminutive names we can 
invent,— unity of apperception, ego, self-con- 
sciousness, what we please ; but we must 
necessarily fail to merge it in the mass of other 
things, or even to shorten in any degree the 
distance between it and other things, unless 
we are to destroy all knowledge and deliver the 
world up to flat, uniform darkness. The phys- 
ical sciences, then, will never prove that all 
things are one, for their own existence depends 
on that which cannot be identified or levelled 
with the physical world which they investigate. 
It may be added that, even if the sciences were 
not debarred from proving the unity of all 
things by the deadly peril to themselves, they 
would find in the consciousness of freedom, on 



1 90 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

which our practical life depends, a difficulty in 
the way of the proof quite as insuperable as 
that which confronts them in the " unity of ap- 
perception," on which knowledge depends. 

If it be said that, though the sciences fail 
to prove the substantial identity of all things, 
they do demonstrate a marvellous correspond- 
ence or relationship between all things known 
to us, whether they be called mind or matter, 
nature or spirit, or whatever else, I can only 
reply that this is perfectly true, and that the 
correspondence or relationship insisted on has 
never been denied or doubted by the people. 
But the wonderful correspondence between the 
remotest and most diverse things in the world, 
seeing that it cannot be explained by any sub- 
stantial unity in the things themselves, or by 
any adequate cause known to science within the 
world of experience, is of a nature to suggest 
strongly, to the popular mind at least, that our 
actual world of experience is not complete in 
itself, but is related to and dependent upon 
causes and ends outside of itself. 

But if the physical sciences, beginning with 
the material world, fail to reach unity, can it 
not be reached by some other process begin- 



Philosophy. 1 9 1 

ning with the self-consciousness which baffles 
the sciences? What shall the process be? 
Sometimes, I admit, it is easier to jump down 
than to jump up precisely the same distance. 
But the jump to complete unity seems equally 
difficult and hazardous wherever you start. It 
was found that self-consciousness could not be 
merged in the objective world without destroy- 
ing the possibility of knowledge. Would not 
the same catastrophe ensue if unity were to be 
attained by merging the world in blank self- 
consciousness ? Or rather, would not self-con- 
sciousness itself fail before the process could be 
completed ? Would not the very unity of ap- 
perception vanish if there were nothing at all 
to be perceived ? Our world of experience is 
impossible without self-consciousness, and our 
self-consciousness cannot exist without the ob- 
jective world. If it were possible for one to 
swallow and assimilate the other, both would 
disappear together in the very act. If we seek 
absolute unity in the world of experience, then, 
begin where we please, we must seek it at the 
peril of that whole world itself, self-conscious- 
ness included. 
And yet, does not this our dire extremity show 



192 Prejudiced Inqu tries, 

that we have been unreasonable with the phil- 
osophers? And does it not at last make ap- 
parent unto us the very unity which they ex- 
pected us to perceive at a glance ? Our world 
of experience cannot exist without self-con- 
sciousness, and our self-consciousness cannot 
exist without the objective world. Destroy but 
one and you destroy both. What sense was 
there, then, in going forth to seek means to 
unite things which are absolutely inseparable 
and dependent on each other for their very 
being? Are we not ashamed of our childish 
wild-goose chase ? Do we not see that we have 
no self-consciousness all by itself, and no objec- 
tive world all by itself, but both inseparably 
joined together in the unity of experience ? 
And do we not see that out of or beyond this 
unity of experience we cannot go ; that the 
unity of experience is, for all mankind, all that 
there is, and all that there can be at all ? 

Now then, at last, and far beyond all our 
hopes, it is by us "perfectly understood that all 
things are but one "; that is, that all things are 
embraced in the unity of experience. We can 
never tell what a satisfaction it is to find our- 
selves again, after a temporary separation, in 



Ph ilosophy. i g 3 

formal accord with philosophers. We shall not 
question their proceedings again if we can 
possibly avoid it. But we may still venture to 
seek more light. We have seen above, that 
after it was perfectly understood by a whole 
age that all things are but one, it was still re- 
served for a great philosopher to " explain the 
nature of that unity and the rationale of its ap- 
pearance as plurality." It cannot be unphilo- 
sophical for us, then, after understanding per- 
fectly that all things are embraced in the unity 
of experience, to require further explanation on 
points not settled by that great fundamental 
understanding. The most pressing question is, 
whether our happy discovery will do any thing 
to assure us of the completeness and indepen- 
dence of the world which at the present time 
we either know or may know in the unity of 
experience, and so to give us a scientific frontier 
which will also be a sure defence against sur- 
prise and unlooked-for intervention. Nothing 
outside of the unity of experience can touch 
us, or affect us at all ; of that we are quite 
sure. But that simply means that no power 
can disturb us while yet on the other side of a 
very remote and unexplored frontier, and we 



1 94 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

wish to know for certain what powers of good 
or evil there may be already within our far out- 
posts, and what there is to hinder other hordes 
from crossing the frontier in the time to come. 
Nothing outside of the unity of experience can 
affect us ; but nothing inside of it can fail to 
concern us. And is there not a most appalling 
plurality possible within this unity? Do we 
know any limit to the plurality and change 
herein possible ? How are we to determine 
what the unity of experience may or may not 
include ? From what stand-point shall we sur- 
vey experience, and measure all its length and 
breadth ? 

To make our own actual experience the 
measure of all possible experience, would be 
not only to beg the question at issue but also 
to complicate it hopelessly ; for every individual 
has an experience of his own, which would be 
the measure of all possible experience, though 
it would differ more or less from the experience 
of every one else, and would itself keep chan- 
ging and increasing from year to year. 

To acknowledge that our actual experience 
cannot be the measure of all possible experience, 
and yet to determine directly from an ex- 



Philosophy. 195 

amination of our actual experience, what further 
experience is possible, is to assume, what needs 
to be proved, that our actual experience fur- 
nishes all the factors and conditions of all 
possible experience. We have already had 
much weighty experience which we could never 
have anticipated. We have speculated con- 
fidently for years, and in one creative day we 
have seen our brave thoughts perish, and a 
new unexpected world burst forth upon us. We 
have much less ground for confidence now in 
calculating all that remains, than we had once 
in reckoning all amiss what has already come. 

There are those who are not at all abashed 
by this difficulty. They urge that we cannot 
expect to survey all experience from the low 
ground of our active life, where the practical 
considerations which befit our condition must 
always limit the scope of speculation ; that we 
must rise far above the mounds and hillocks of 
our native heath, and above the agonizing 
strife and endeavor of our own hearts, and 
view experience from the lofty and serene 
standpoint of universal thought. The simple, 
inevitable answer is, that we must stand, not 
where we would, but where we can ; and that 



1 96 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

we can truly stand only where we are placed, 
even on the low ground, if low ground it must 
be called, of the practical and moral life of man. 
Any attempt to get away from this ground will 
becloud our world and impoverish our knowl- 
edge rather than enlarge or enrich either, — will, 
in fact, take away from us the best of what we 
have, without giving us any thing that we have 
not. Man has a place and a part in the 
universe ; and if he quits his place and throws 
away his part in his search for a higher mount 
of speculation, he shall be, not sicut Deus, who, 
though high over all, is yet in his own rightful 
place, but sicut diabolus, whose mounting is a 
defection and a fall ; and he will be no nearer 
the universal than he was before. Our practi- 
cal and moral life is within the unity of ex- 
perience ; and we have no reason to suppose 
that its significance is diminished as the point 
of view rises higher. On the contrary, we 
have every reason to believe that its significance 
would be, and is, most emphatically recognized 
from the highest point of all. No survey of expe- 
rience, therefore, can be adequate which either 
makes light of man's moral life or fails to take 
due account of the leading facts relating to it. 



Ph ilosophy. I g y 

One of the most obvious facts relating to it 
is that it cannot be viewed in its entirety from 
the starting-point. It advances far from thence 
through unforeseen stages — some of them so 
startling and so momentous, that they are best 
described by the strongest terms which human 
speech can fashion. Regeneration and new 
birth and new creation are strong words, but 
none too strong here. As the higher stages 
are reached, new revelations are necessarily 
made to the mind and new power is commu- 
nicated to the heart, transforming the whole 
life. The philosopher who is to explain this 
moral life must not stand outside of it, and 
must not linger near the threshold. He of 
all men must earnestly go on unto perfection, 
that he may spiritually discern spiritual things 
and speak with convincing authority to men of 
advanced spiritual experience. 

Another obvious fact relating to our moral 
or spiritual life is, that while it profoundly con- 
cerns the individual, it also concerns the human 
race as a whole and has a continuous history in 
the world. This history, though its course was 
dimly foreshadowed from the earliest times, has 
been, like the moral life of the individual, full 



1 9 8 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

of great and marvellous surprises. All nations 
have their places in it, but one separate people 
occupies a pre-eminent place in the midst of the 
nations. The long-prepared work of this sepa- 
rate people was gathered up and brought to its 
pre-determined world-wide issue by one man, 
who stands in a manifestly unique relation to 
the moral life and history of all mankind. 
This man, Christ Jesus, comes within the 
unity of human experience ; and he will 
prove to our philosophy, as to our whole 
spiritual life, either a stone of stumbling and a 
rock of offence, or the Chief Corner-stone. He 
comes to us within the unity of experience, 
and in the survey of all experience, He and 
His work must be surveyed. If the world 
which we know is to be proved complete in 
itself and independent, His place, as well as 
our own, within the world, must be clearly 
pointed out. Philosophers could not fail to 
perceive this necessity, and they have made 
bold efforts to meet it. They have, however, 
not succeeded too well even in pointing out 
our own place within the known world. Men 
turn away from their forced demonstrations, 
and, all at sea, whisper sadly to one another 



Philosophy. 1 99 

the vast, indeterminate ejaculation of the 
poet : 

"We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

But if philosophers are baffled in their at- 
tempts to exhibit the place and relations of plain 
mankind in the world, what shall be said of their 
endeavors to place here the man Christ Jesus? 
Let it suffice to say that their endeavors thus 
far have been so violent, so fantastical, so con- 
tradictory, as to serve scarcely any other pur- 
pose than to fix anew the gaze of serious men 
upon the account which the Christians of nine- 
teen centuries have steadfastly believed — the 
account full of deep and awful mystery which 
the apostles give of Him whom they call their 
Lord and Saviour and the only-begotten Son of 
God. 

This account directs our eyes to an Infinity 
not of space or duration merely, but of life and 
love and power ; extending indeed unto us, 
manifesting itself in many ways to our 
thought, and folding our world within its 
embrace, but extending also immeasurably 
beyond the furthest reach of human thought, 



200 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

and calling into being worlds which have not 
entered into the heart of man. But this dis- 
closure of an Infinity, related to us and yet 
largely unknown unto us, carries with it, not dis- 
may and terror, not doubt and perplexity, but 
the gladdest, surest tidings ever heard of per- 
petual peace and good-will unto men. All 
things are not one, but God is one, and the 
subjection of all things must be perfect, that 
He may be all in all. " There is no fear of the 
end ; perfect love has cast out fear. There is 
no fear of that which lies as the unknown, for 
the law which determines it is known. There 
is no fear of that which may be summoned forth 
from beyond the confines of this earth or drawn 
from the lowest deeps ; for the same organic 
law prevails through all worlds, — the law mani- 
fested in the Christ, in His redemptive king- 
dom." (Mulford, " Republic of God," p. 255.) 

If the teaching of the apostles concerning the 
person and work of Christ be true, it determines 
the general interpretation of the world ; and the 
philosophy which ignores it, whatever merits it 
may have, must give a singularly irrelevant ac- 
count of human experience. If the teaching of 
the apostles is not true, it is not fit instruction 



Philosophy. 2 o 1 

for cobblers or maid-servants, or for any of the 
humblest of the people, and it would bring 
deathless honor to the wisest philosophers if 
they would but tell the world frankly what the 
truth is about the grave and far-reaching ques- 
tions which the apostles have discussed in vain. 
But whether the doctrine of the apostles is true 
or not, it is certainly put forth as a serious, 
comprehensive account of the world, and it 
boldly appeals to all forms of evidence which 
should support such an account. It is not the 
ipse dixit of a master, or the labored, artificial 
product of a school. It professes to be a plain 
statement of world-controlling facts, and, though 
full of mystery, it certainly is the plainest state- 
ment possible, supposing the facts to be true. 
It invites all men to study the facts, and to in- 
quire whether they be true or not, commending 
such inquiry as most magnanimous. It does 
not live merely in a by-gone world, however. 
It speaks of One who was and is and is to 
come, who has relations as real and intimate 
with one generation as with another through all 
history. It seeks to commend itself directly to 
the minds and consciences of the men of to-day 
as the true key to the very life which we are 



2 02 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

now living as well as to all history and to the 
universe at large. It eagerly courts the crucial 
test of practical life. It demands that those 
who believe it shall trust themselves wholly to 
its direction, and seek to bring all human society 
under its guidance, and it promises that its 
truth shall become more evident the more it is 
trusted and obeyed. It has been widely and 
seriously believed in the world, by men of all 
intellectual ranks, ever since its first proclama- 
tion. It is believed to-day more widely than 
ever, and no less seriously, by the greatest as 
well as by the humblest of men. It affiliates 
readily our positive thought and all our estab- 
lished knowledge. It meets the deepest, strong- 
est yearnings of our nature, and it gives us our 
heart's desire. It inspires the noblest efforts, 
and it secures the greatest achievements of 
mankind. Such an account of the world, if not 
accepted as the true explanation, must, at least, 
itself be explained. It is too conspicuous, it is 
too strong, it lives on too majestically from age 
to age, it wins too many first-rate minds, it is a 
formidable rival too near the throne of phil- 
osophy itself, to be left out of all the thoughts 
of philosophers. 



Philosophy. 203 

« 

But here, abruptly, our inquiry ends. We 
are content to be still taught by the apostles, 
and we believe that we shall find their teaching 
not only confirmed, but bearing fruit, in every 
field open to human thought. But the greatest 
philosophers must seriously study and weigh, 
with us, the apostolic doctrine, in all its wide 
bearings and profound significance. We shall 
get better acquainted while studying the same 
lessons in the same school ; and who knows but 
we may all discover to our great joy that the 
apostles' doctrine and true philosophy agree in 
one, and that we can continue to learn and 
labor together, with the greatest diversities and 
disparities of gifts, but with one object and one 
spirit and one exceeding great reward ? 



LECTURE X. 

FREE THINKING. 

We are made for freedom, and the world is 
large enough to allow us all the freedom we 
can take. We can walk and we can run till we 
are tired out before we come to the " green 
earth's end " ; and if we have a mind to climb 
or soar upward, there is plenty of room for our 
eagle-winged ambition in 

' ' Those happy climes that lie 
Where day never shuts his eye, 
Up in the broad fields of the sky." 

There is no limit to our freedom but the finite 
constitution and necessary bounds of our own 
nature. It is true that men are often confined 
in dungeons, and hurt with fetters, and laid in 
iron ; but sometimes they walk across the 
boundaries of human nature into the dun- 
geons, and they forge the fetters and weld 
the iron themselves. When this is not the 
case — when men are caged and manacled by 

204 



Free Thinking. 205 

arbitrary violence, humanity rises in arms at 
the outrage and marches armies across Africa, 
or calls peaceful nations to the tented field to 
set the captives free ; so precious and so sacred 
is bodily freedom. What shall we say then of 
the freedom of the mind ? And what must not 
mankind do to maintain it inviolate? Are there 
any among us so base that they would not read- 
ily part with all they have and with life itself, 
rather than sacrifice this godlike privilege? 
Are there any so lost to all care for the gen- 
eral good that they will not, to their last 
breath, defend this right, not for themselves 
only, but also for all their fellow-men? No; 
deep as our depravity is, and many as are our 
bitter dissensions, we are all agreed that the 
mind must be free. Look forth, if you please, 
upon the divided forces of mankind; single out 
factions the most hostile to one another and 
the most irreconcilable — will you not find the 
gallant banner of free thought waving over 
them all alike ? Take those who may seem to 
be parted asunder by this very question, — take 
the religious and the irreligious world; or, to 
avoid what may be deemed a disputable and 
offensive distinction, take the Christian and the 



206 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

anti-Christian world. Christianity lives and 
moves and has its being in free thought. It 
holds its ground and extends its power among 
men only by opening up new worlds before 
them and inviting their minds to enter in 
freely and possess the land. It not only in- 
vites them to enter freely, but it urges them 
to consider the matter well and count the cost, 
and enter deliberately if at all. Christianity 
claims our allegiance only as a reasonable ser- 
vice. Though it is very much more, yet it cer- 
tainly is a " religion founded on argument," and 
it presents its argument with astonishing frank- 
ness. It will conceal nothing ; it will mitigate 
nothing ; it has no craftiness and no fear ; what 
is foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling- 
block to the Jews, and a continual alarm and 
embarrassment to its own fashionable, worldly- 
wise adherents, it exposes of set purpose and 
without reserve. It comes boldly into the light 
everywhere, and will not skulk or dodge for 
friend or foe. Its argument, though full of 
stumbling -'blocks, is neither cabalistic nor 
mystical. It is clear as the day, and deals 
with great interests and robust matters of 
fact which concern all men. It handles his- 



Free Thinking. 207 

tory on the largest scale and most openly. 
It commits itself irretrievably on the most 
momentous questions of philosophy. It 
searches the deepest secrets of our hearts, 
and offers to tell us both the dream of our 
life and the interpretation thereof. It de- 
clares the law of our individual and social 
life, often reversing both the headlong judg- 
ments of the multitude and the seasoned wis- 
dom of the scribes, yet appealing calmly to the 
decision of events. Though coming from 
heaven, it declares unto us earthly things, 
and bids us judge of what it says and not ex- 
pect to come at the heavenly otherwise than 
through the earthly. It does not address men 
in masses merely, and it is not satisfied with a 
public or formal recognition. It comes to men 
individually in the "sessions of sweet silent 
thought," and, in full view of all the intel- 
lectual stumbling-blocks and all the carnal 
rocks of offence, in the face of the scorning 
of those that are at ease and the contempt of 
the proud, it asks to be received with the whole 
heart and mind. It summons man to the great- 
est act of intellectual and moral freedom of 
which he is capable ; and its whole aim is to 



208 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

bring him to a larger place and a greater free- 
dom, — to bestow upon him the spirit, not of 
fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound 
mind, — to make him free indeed. 

The Christian world, then, has a right to un- 
furl the " imperial ensign " of free thought. It 
is the necessary, normal spirit of Christianity 
that speaks, through the pens of earnest and 
devout Christians, in the Liberty of Prophesying, 
Showing the Unreasonableness of Prescribing to 
Other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of Persecut- 
ing Differing Opinions ; and in Areopagitica — a 
Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to 
the Parliament of England ; and in the famous 
Letters on Toleration. 

But turn now to anti-Christian ladies and 
gentlemen. Do they not favor freedom of 
thought ? The very question is absurd, and I 
would not ask it but for the necessity of pro- 
ceeding with my subject. I will, however, do 
them the justice to omit, as entirely useless, 
any demonstration of their devotion to free 
thinking. If words have any force, if declara- 
tions and protestations avail any thing, we 
ought to know that these brethren seriously 
look upon themselves as a chosen generation, a 



Free Thinking. 209 

peculiar people, raised up for the particular 
benefit of free thought, and that, consequently, 
they must be as zealous for freedom as the 
Christian world itself. Any one of them, doubt- 
less, might have written the Liberty of Prophe- 
sying, or Areopagitica. 

Here we have, then, a great and violent 
schism on the very question of free thought, 
and when the confusion of the separation al- 
lows us to discern any thing, we find the em- 
battled hosts encamped upon the self-same hill, 
flying identical colors and passing common 
watchwords, though they have neither signed 
a treaty of peace nor even proclaimed a truce. 
They evidently agree at heart, and we all 
agree, in fervent devotion to perfect freedom 
of thought. 

Therefore, though I say it who should not 
till I am through with this lecture at any rate, 
perhaps the best thing we can do is to drop 
this whole subject, and, without further ado, 
use the freedom we claim, and think freely till 
some one stops us. I doubt whether anybody 
will ever attempt to stop us at all. Some 
weary, baffled thinkers may, more in dejection 
than in charity, exhort us to abandon the 



2 1 o Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

highest and greatest questions as unthinkable. 
But I cannot believe that they will use violence 
to restrain us if we decide to think the unthink- 
able at our own risk, and if they will not restrain 
us, it is certain that nobody else will. Seeing, 
then, that we have plenty of room to do all the 
thinking of which we are capable, it seems 
childish to buckle on the armor and breathe 
the stormy defiance of old heroes who had to 
cut their way through the serried ranks and 
flaming swords of dread adversaries. All the 
good that such bluster can do nowadays is to 
warn the heedless world that we are thinking, 
or going to think. It is more akin to the ad- 
vertising cackle of a domestic hen over her 
new-laid egg than to the prowess of heroes. It 
would be much more dignified, when we think, 
to anoint our heads and wash our faces in un- 
affected simplicity, and let the world find out, 
in due time and by its own wit, that we have 
been thinking, or suffer such penalty as is meet 
for its dulness. 

If we keep battling for freedom of thought, 
when such freedom is in no wise endangered 
from without, besides exposing ourselves as 
vainglorious blusterers, we make awkward 



Free Thinking. 2 1 1 

thrusts in various ways at the very cause which 
we would serve. We excite all the odium we can 
against those whom, unless the war is to be 
altogether in the clouds, we must represent as 
our enemies, though all their enmity consists 
in using earnestly the very freedom for which 
we so vehemently contend as the birthright of 
all men. We also excite unnecessary and dis- 
astrous odium against ourselves. Our neigh- 
bors are naturally well-disposed towards us, and, 
as a general thing, they are not a bit afraid of 
our thought. We could go about all our think- 
ing in peace, with their genial blessing, and 
from our furthest excursions we could return 
to them proudly to divide the spoil. They 
would give us a royal welcome and a glittering 
triumph for the scantiest achievements. All 
our slightest trophies would please them, for 
they are exceedingly good-natured ; but we 
could scarcely astonish them, and much less 
confound and overwhelm them, with our rich- 
est, rarest treasure. They will absorb all that 
we can bring them, and complacently gape for 
more. They have the swallow of a whale or a 
sea. Whatever we can hold, be we ever so 
capacious, they also can contain easily. We 



2 1 2 Prejitdiced Inquiries. 

cannot fill them or choke them with thought. 
But if we must insult the unoffending people 
at the start, and think with the air of rebels 
and public enemies or angry superior gods, 
scowling and fulminating even before we strike 
a single thought of any consequence, the abused 
multitude will still take us at our own estimate, 
and give us the coveted place of outcasts, and 
quietly neglect our opera omnia, not because 
they fear them at all, but because they choose 
to dispense with the overweening services of 
ill-natured, ill-mannered, unreasonable mon- 
keys. 

Worst of all, needless battling for freedom of 
thought not only foments a senseless persecu- 
tion against worthy and peaceable men, and 
breeds public contempt and neglect of the 
arduous, much-heralded thought of the dashing 
veterans who do the one-sided fighting, but, 
alas ! tends directly to render their arduous, 
much-heralded thought, apart from all preju- 
dice, not unworthy of neglect, to say the least. 
Even if we had to fight real enemies who 
threatened to stop all our thinking or to rule it 
with a rod of iron, the fighting would rightly 
be considered a hard necessity laid upon us by 



Free Thinking. 2 1 3 

our foes, and a grievous interruption of the 
sowing and reaping and manifold industry and 
prosperity of our proper intellectual life. But 
actual enemies could be met at definite points 
in decisive engagements. Some temporary 
mode of living could be arranged, and 
some period and settlement might be looked 
for in such a conflict. A war without real ene- 
mies, on the other hand, is a war without any 
prospect of peace ; a war which cannot be con- 
fined to any definite area or brought to any 
head or tail anywhere ; a war which will go on 
pottering wearily and ineffectually over a whole 
mind and a whole lifetime, disfiguring and im- 
poverishing both. If we engage in such a war 
for the freedom of thought, our own thought 
at least will have little freedom, and will prob- 
ably do little good of any sort to anybody. 
Before we begin to think we shall have wasted 
our best strength in maintaining against warlike 
shadows and nightmares our right to think ; 
and when at last we begin to think, the uncon- 
querable shadows will again swoop down upon 
us from a clear sky, and goad us to such stren- 
uous fury in our efforts to think freely that we 
shall think unnaturally, and falsely, and most 



214 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

slavishly withal. Every desperate blow we 
strike for liberty will but rivet our chains. Our 
career will be like that of a miser who in his 
anxiety to increase his store keeps reducing his 
pittance, and who enriches himself and starves 
himself at the same pace. 

If, however, our hearts are warmly enlisted 
in this inspiring cause, we shall probably dis- 
dain all warning as temporizing and mean- 
spirited. But we may, perhaps, be induced to 
encourage a modest inquiry into the nature of 
that freedom of thought for which, even at this 
time, we still feel compelled to fight. 

Is it the freedom of the thought within the 
mind, or freedom from personal activity or ef- 
fort in thinking, that is required ? Is it free- 
dom from interference on our own part with 
the spontaneous flow of thought within us ? 
Must the thoughts be free from the mind in 
which they are conceived ? We all believe that 
the original sources of thought are not at the 
command of the will, and that we cannot manu- 
facture thought to order by any mechanical 
contrivance. We are aware that bright, happy 
thoughts often come to us unsought, we know 
not whence ; and we have heard of fair divini- 



Free Thinking. 215 

ties nightly visiting the slumber of great po- 
ets and bringing them their immortal works 
all but ready-made. Perhaps the great enemy 
of thought is the meddling intellect ; and we 
cannot think freely, it may be, until we are de- 
livered from the domineering activity of our 
own minds. 

' ' The eye — it cannot choose but see ; 
We cannot bid the ear be still ; 
Our bodies feel, where'er they be, 
Against, or with our will. 

' ' Nor less I deem that there are powers 

Which of themselves our minds impress ; 
That we can feed this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness. 

" Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 
Of things for ever speaking, 
That nothing of itself will come, 
That we must still be seeking ? 

" Then ask not wherefore, here, alone, 
Conversing as I may, 
I sit upon this old gray stone, 
And dream my time away." 

Is that old gray stone the goal of our striv- 
ing ? Is it perfect freedom to dream life away, 
waiting for that which of itself will come ? If 



2 1 6 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

so, why strive at all ? We can sit down right 
here, and win the great victory without labor 
or risk. But we are not fighting our own 
battle merely. We are " soldiers in the war of 
the liberation of humanity." We could sit 
down on the old stone ourselves, perhaps, in a 
wise, passive temper, and throw our minds 
wide open for wandering thoughts to work 
their promiscuous will unrestrained, and there- 
by secure all the freedom of thought we per- 
sonally craved. But such is the weakness of 
language, and such is the inherent imperfection 
of all forms of reasoning, that we could never 
make it appear unto others that the way to be 
free is to abdicate the government of our own 
thoughts, and sit still to be preyed upon by 
idle dreams and casual imaginations. Most 
men are incapable of receiving so great a para- 
dox, and would conclude that in such a state of 
freedom it is the thoughts alone that are free, 
while the poor thinker is the slave and victim 
of an incoherent, irresponsible rabble. Average 
men will insist on being free themselves, and 
will direct and restrain their thoughts as they 
do their households. They will give courteous 
audience to grave, majestic thoughts, as to 



Free Thinking. 217 

honored counsellors or ambassadors ; and they 
will receive lighter thoughts with the comedi- 
ans and the fools, to make them laugh when 
the stress of serious business is over : but they 
will reign in the midst of all the thoughts 
which they entertain ; and to the innumerable, 
indistinguishable thoughts which refuse to as- 
sume the forms and acknowledge the laws of 
their own minds they will give no more heed 
than to the formless ghosts which flit and twit- 
ter on the banks of Acheron. Men generally 
consider thinking an act of their own, a manly 
exercise, not the random work of loose, inde- 
pendent thoughts within them ; and they even 
assume that right thinking consists largely in 
limiting the freedom of what is called sponta- 
neous thought, and subjecting it to the quick- 
ening and directing power of the personal 
mind. They hope for no enlargement of 
thought through mere waiting. They expect 
to think their way every step to the farthest 
realms of thought they will ever reach. They 
believe in growth and in inspiration, but not in 
any inspiration or growth which supersedes the 
active cooperation of the thinking mind. How- 
ever we may regret it, then, and whatever nota- 



2 1 8 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

ble exceptions may cheer us in our disappoint- 
ment, it would be vain to seek, for mankind at 
large, the freedom which would emancipate 
thought from the personal mind. The mass of 
men will always think their own thoughts with 
all the circumspection and intellectual self- 
mastery which they can command ; and unat- 
tached, undirected thoughts can make a play- 
ground of their minds only when they are 
asleep or perchance intoxicated. 

If, therefore, the thoughts cannot, in general, 
be free from the yoke of the thinking mind, 
shall we pass over to the other side, and con- 
tend that the mind must be absolutely free 
among its thoughts, free from allegiance to any 
of them, and free from all entangling alliances 
with them ; free to prefer one above another, 
to be sure, but free also from the tyranny of 
any preference ; free to decide all questions, 
yet entirely untrammelled by its own decisions ; 
free to pursue truth for the simple delight of 
the pursuit, and free to let truth go back to the 
bush when overtaken, rather than exchange the 
exhilarating sport of the chase for the tame en- 
joyment of so circumscribed a possession ; free 
to take any conceivable course in the wide uni- 



Free Thinking. 219 

verse of thought, and, to maintain that immense 
freedom, free also to halt between all courses, 
and to decline any and every particular course 
whatsoever ? 

It must be confessed that there is in such 
freedom a romantic boundlessness which is 
very fascinating. Thought ordinarily presses 
urgently along fixed lines towards a definite 
end in some conclusion or other ; but the free- 
dom here proposed would keep the mind clear 
of every goal and clear of every track for ever, 
eclipsing the mystery of the Flying Dutchman. 
Is such freedom of thought possible ? A little 
friend of mine, contemplating the state of soci- 
ety around her, and anticipating years to come, 
declared solemnly that she would never be an 
old maid, and that she would never in the world 
be married, but that, when the proper time 
arrived, she would surely be a rich widow. 
Wary little maiden of long ago, what became 
of thy perfectly discreet plan ? Did not the 
mere flow of years make thee an old maid with- 
out thy consent ? And didst thou not, in sheer 
fright, at last get married, finding no other way 
to escape thy first and greatest aversion? Is 
not a like necessity laid upon the mind of man ? 



220 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

If it will not think truly, must it not think 
falsely ? If it will not think one way or the 
other, but will ever hold itself in maiden free- 
dom from all thought and for all thought, must 
it not lapse into a barren, inane senility, sans 
freedom, sans thought, sans every thing ? 

And must the mind be free to think falsely, 
if it pleases ; free to think that black is white, 
that fair is foul, and foul is fair ; that yes and 
no to the same question always mean the same 
thing ; that two and two make five, or fifteen, 
or fifty, just as it may choose to decide ? If we 
attain such freedom, how shall we distinguish 
between free-thinking and the delirium of t the 
sick or the raving of maniacs, and how shall we 
save our thinkers from rushing in herds over 
beetling precipices into the sea ? Such free- 
dom should be accompanied by power to create 
and uncreate worlds, and by a sure, unthinking 
instinct to guide that power to make reality 
wait on thought, since thought must be free to 
break away from reality. Situated as we are, 
we must be content with a freedom of thought 
which is not all caprice and lawlessness. Our 
minds must, at least, bear the yoke of sanity, 
and do homage to reason and truth. 



Free Thinking. 221 

But, granting that the mind must not be law- 
less, cannot in fact be lawless because it is 
rationally constituted, must we not yet demand 
that the mind, in thinking, shall at any rate be 
free from the biassing influence of hopes, and 
fears, and desires, and all the imperious ele- 
ments of our social and moral nature ? Must 
not the intellect be completely independent of 
the affections and the conscience, lest its de- 
liberations be disturbed by their fixed bent and 
overborne by their vehemence ? Is not this 
freedom of the intellect proper from the practi- 
cal principles in our nature the true freedom of 
thought for which there has been so much faith- 
ful groping ? And is not this freedom indis- 
pensable if thought is to be trustworthy ? 

We seem to have struck firm ground at last, 
don't we ? It seems to be fairness itself to de- 
mand that nothing shall tamper with the purely 
intellectual character, the dry light, of our 
thinking. But even here a very little considera- 
tion brings up a perplexing array of difficulties. 
First of all, how is our subtle inward nature to 
be practically broken up into parts, and how 
are the parts to be kept separate and out of 
one another's hearing, so to speak, while our 



222 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

thinking is going on ? It would be easier to 
cut out for Shylock his stipulated pound of flesh 
from the living human breast, without spilling 
the blood which was not in his bond, than to 
separate the intellect, for practical purposes, 
from the affections or from the moral nature in 
handling matters with which the affections and 
the moral nature are concerned. We can vary 
the temperature and change the objects of our 
affections, but we cannot eradicate the affec- 
tions themselves or deprive them of their 
natural power over the mind or in the mind. 
Sour or frigid or cramped or inverted and un- 
natural affections are still real affections, and 
will influence thought as much as the freshest, 
warmest, most genial and orderly affections in 
the world. So of our moral nature. It has an 
infinite range upward and downward ; but it 
cannot be got rid of, and it cannot be deprived, 
at any stage of elevation or debasement, of its 
natural bearing and influence on the mind. As 
we can become immoral if we will but cannot 
become unmoral, so our greatest efforts to 
eliminate moral elements from our thought can 
only result in substituting for them immoral 
elements. The Christian graces of faith, hope, 



Free Thinking. 223 

chanty, and purity, cannot flourish in the soul 
without powerfully affecting the intellect, both 
in its theoretical view of the world and in its 
creative activity. On the other hand, distrust, 
and craven fear, and hopelessness, and uncharit- 
ableness, and vile sensuality, are not neutral 
in relation to thought. They prejudge the 
greatest questions, and color our most momen- 
tous thought as necessarily as the Christian 
graces themselves. There is no way to make 
the intellect, in its operations, independent of 
the rest of our human nature. 

If a way could be found, and if the intellect 
were practically severed from our whole moral 
life, the question would arise, What is to guide 
and serve our moral life, now that its old lamp 
is taken away from it ? But that question is 
for others, or for us at another time. We are 
not concerned with the moral life now, but 
with the intellectual life ; and it is more to 
our present purpose to ask, if our minds were 
wholly released from our moral nature and 
from all hopes and fears and from every de- 
sire, who would pay us for thinking? What 
inducement would there be for us to think at 
all? What security that thinking would not 



224 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

perish from the earth ? The great and varied 
interests — temporal and eternal — of our indi- 
vidual and social life supply a powerful spring 
for intellectual activity on their behalf. But 
when the thinking mind is free from all the 
rest of our nature, what purpose will all its in- 
dependent thinking serve ? Will the bare mind 
think simply for its own bare pleasure? If that 
is to be the use of its freedom, let it win its un- 
profitable freedom alone, without any aid from 
the public spirit and other moral energies which 
it will spurn from it when free. 

Again, what will the independent intellect 
think about? When it loses all that it owes 
to its intimate communion with the affections 
and the moral nature, will it not confess that 
its emancipation has dimmed its eyes and 
clipped its wings, and that it has been " en- 
franchised with a clog"? The fairest, most 
spacious fields of thought are forever beyond 
the reach of mere intellect. The natural and 
spiritual affections in their normal, healthy ac- 
tivity are not disturbers, but benefactors of 
thought. They furnish its noblest material. 
They discover worlds for it. They are the 
true openers of its eyes. They are its guides 



Free Thinking. 225 

to new regions of knowledge beyond the " dark 
unbottomed infinite abyss," where the senses 
desert it. Rather than perverting and enslav- 
ing thought, they ennoble it and enlarge its 
freedom ; and the more they are quickened, 
and the more firmly they are fixed upon their 
proper objects, the ampler and more glorious 
will be the liberty which they bestow. 

The bare intellect, then, if there be such a 
thing, must not take too much upon itself. 
Our souls and all that is within us must help 
to determine our best thoughts. On the high- 
est and gravest questions the whole spiritual 
man must do the effective thinking, whether 
or not his thinking can be fully displayed in 
strict logical forms or in any forms whatever. 

But if we must not divide man against him- 
self in our zeal for free thinking, may we not 
separate him from his fellows? May we not 
insist that every man's thinking shall be en- 
tirely independent of every other man's? If 
we choose this as our end, we must choose 
effective means to secure the end : and what 
shall the means be? In the interest of this 
freedom we must probably frame conventicle 
acts, and five-mile acts, and other coer- 



226 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

cive measures far surpassing in scope and 
stringency any thing ever devised by the 
fiercest oppressors. We must forbid all pub- 
lic meetings and all private intercourse be- 
tween man and man. We must cancel the 
liberty of prophesying, and the liberty of un- 
licensed printing, and all other liberties which 
favor the communion of mind with mind. We 
must expel not the Bible only, but all other 
books also from the schools, or rather, we 
must abolish the schools themselves. We 
must separate parent and child, and break up 
the family, and dissolve society, and effect- 
ually isolate every human mind. But that is 
a stupendous undertaking. It will take at 
least one half of the human race to blockade 
the other half in this " hard liberty"; and 
then, quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? Most men 
desire to learn something from those who have 
gone before them ; and those who most con- 
temptuously reject instruction would still 
teach others as gladly as the pious and 
learned clerk of Oxenford. Those who will 
owe nothing to the past, would fain have the 
present and even the future owe every thing 
to them. There is not a free thinker — no, 



Free Thinking. 227 

not one — who could be trusted to protect 
loyally the absolute independence of every 
individual mind. We must do without abso- 
lute independence, then, and put up with an 
independence more or less qualified. And 
now for the qualifications. 

Shall we say that the mind must surely be 
directed and helped in youth, but should attain 
freedom with its maturity ; that as it is vain to 
give a child freedom to walk before he is able 
to walk, as the child must be taught and helped 
to walk, and then may be permitted to walk 
freely, so freedom to think is of no avail with- 
out the power to think, but should be claimed 
and granted as the power is developed? If we 
say this, it will be hard to gainsay us ; but it 
will be easy to show that we have not won any 
exceptional victory for independence of thought. 
We have admitted that any mental indepen- 
dence worth having must depend on maturity 
and power of mind, and that our maturity and 
power must be reached by the aid of others. 
What are we to do with the modesty of genius 
if it will not be weaned from the old fountains 
whence it drew its first inspiration ? And what 
shall we do with the growing humility which 



228 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

attends the greatest attainments, and makes 
maturity seem further off, and assistance more 
desirable, day by day ? The notorious fact is 
that in every great line of thought the helpless 
infants and the callow youths are squirming and 
screaming for independence, while the tried and 
seasoned minds are thankful for aid. The chil- 
dren will not go to school ; the strong men will 
not forsake their teachers. The brief span of 
threescore years and ten does not suffice either 
to bring the human mind to its full maturity or 
to enable the individual to leave behind him 
the wisdom of the race. If we need direction 
at the beginning of our career we need it to the 
end. 

Let us admit, then, that it is proper for one 
mind to receive help from other minds all 
through its career ; that both learning and 
teaching are legitimate at every age ; that it 
becomes us to profit by the thought of past 
generations, and that we may justly hope to 
influence the thought of generations to come. 
Let us admit all this ; but let us try to insert 
some saving clause as to the character or the 
measure of the aid which one mind may, with- 
out forfeiting its freedom, continue to receive 



Free Thinking. 229 

from other minds. What if we say that the 
free mind may always receive from other minds 
help to think, but not actual thoughts ; that it 
may receive stimulus and direction to seek 
truth, but not the truth itself, — materials and 
data of all kinds, but no definite conclusions, 
no cut-and-dry doctrines? In fact, something 
like this has often been said, so that we are not 
alone in venturing to suggest it ; and, indeed, 
we should never have dared to mention it with- 
out the authority of brilliant names to balance 
obvious objections. As it is, we cannot under- 
take to answer any questions on the subject. 
We cannot explain how the learning or the 
teaching can be carried on within the limits 
prescibed, whether by Socratic dialogue, or by 
dumb show, or how. We cannot imagine how 
materials and data can be given without giving 
some definite truth. Nor can we assign any 
reason why, after receiving the direction and 
the stimulus and the data which must determine 
the truth, we may not just as well receive the 
truth itself. The permission to give and to re- 
ceive every thing but the conclusion to which 
every thing tends seems, we must confess, like 
permitting a squad of surgeons to pull and 



230 Prejtidiced Inqtt tries. 

squeeze at a dislocated joint with all their 
might, only with the understanding that they 
must be sure to stop just short of setting it 
right. We made our suggestion hastily, with- 
out seeing why free minds which have their 
data in cojnmon may not remain free with 
conclusions in common, and without consider- 
ing how the freest minds, if sane, can avoid re- 
ceiving conclusions when they receive premises. 
To avoid quizzing and cavilling, however, let 
it be admitted that free thinkers may receive 
from their fellow-men actual thoughts, definite 
conclusions, and if there be any value in the 
addition, cut-and-dry doctrines also, provided 
only that all the conclusions and the doctrines 
be capable of verification, and be carefully veri- 
fied by those who receive them. This will 
probably satisfy the champions of free thought. 
Should it not also satisfy all reasonable men? 
Something will depend on the meaning of the 
verification required. If all that is intended is, 
that the mind must not formally or mechanically 
assent to traditional doctrines or teachings with- 
out apprehending their meaning and scope and 
assuring itself of the validity of the grounds 
on which they rest, all reasonable people will 



Free Thinking. 231 

support the demand for verification, because 
verification, in the sense here defined, is essen- 
tial not only to the coveted free thought but to 
all real thought, to the most conservative 
thought as well as to the most liberal. It 
would be too uncharitable to suppose that all 
those who receive their most absorbing 
thoughts and their most sacred convictions 
from others receive "them, lightly and blindly, 
not as thoughts and convictions at all but as 
inert traditions. To receive a thought involves 
the apprehension of it ; to receive a conviction 
involves a serious estimate of its rational 
grounds. The aim of all serious teaching is 
not to sow dead tradition in slumbering minds, 
but to commend established truth, by means 
of its rational, convincing grounds, to the awak- 
ened minds and consciences of men. The very 
process of learning truth from others, then, is 
a continual verification of the truth in the sense 
given above ; and all will agree that such veri- 
fication must be insisted on : and the free think- 
ers, if that be all that they desire, will have the 
surprising satisfaction of finding mankind on 
their side. 

If, however, by demanding that every con- 



232 Prejudiced Inqttiries. 

elusion received be verified, they mean to sub- 
ject all our thoughts, throughout their infinite 
range, to a uniform test, that test being the 
particular method of verification with which we 
are familiar in experimental science, there is a 
very great gulf fixed between them and man- 
kind ; and no human being can afford to pass 
over unto them unless he can command the sun 
and the course of time anci all the pressing in- 
terests of life to stand still, that he may have 
the unlimited leisure which his verifications will 
require. For he will have to turn his face back- 
ward to begin with ; and it is very doubtful 
whether he will ever be ready to face any other 
way. He has his actual stock of thoughts to 
verify first of all. This actual stock is mostly 
old stock, accumulated long before his scrupu- 
lous free thinking began. In his later and more 
scrupulous thinking he had to use much of the 
old stock in every operation, so that the whole 
pile of his actual thoughts rests on the old un- 
verified accumulations. He must remove every 
thought until he reaches the very bottom of the 
pile ; and when he reaches the bottom of the 
unverified heap, he will be confronted by un- 
verified foundations reaching downward nobody 



Free Thinking. 233 

knows how far ; and he will have to verify these 
deep and dark foundations scientifically without 
a single thought in his head to work with. 
Surely we shall never hear of him again above 
ground. He must grub blindly in the abyss 
" ages of hopeless end." Or if, in pity on him- 
self, and in tenderness towards his own thoughts, 
he resolves to decline this backward search and 
proceed at once to verify, or rather (for so it 
must be with his arbitrary method) to prove 
unverifiable and therefore untenable, the deep- 
est and most precious convictions of mankind, 
is he not more abominably inconsistent than the 
Prophet Jonah who had pity on the gourd 
which came up in a night, and yet would not 
spare Nineveh, that great city, with its myriads 
of souls ? And how can he be supposed to love 
freedom and truth when he builds impassable 
barriers around himself, and deliberately shuts 
truth out at all entrances but one, that one en- 
trance being, in the nature of things, too low 
and too narrow to admit the highest truths 
which are suggested to us as probable, even if 
they be most real and knocking loudly at his 
doors ? 

We must abandon our inquiry without dis- 



234 Prejtcdiced Inqit tries. 

covering the freedom of thought which is to be 
won at the present day by strife and conten- 
tion. We cannot by searching find that those 
who contend the most for freedom have any 
more of it than those against whom they con- 
tend. The anti-Christian zealots have no more 
freedom of thought than the firmest Christian 
believers. The Christian, it is true, believes 
with all his heart in the incarnation of the 
Son of God, in his atoning death for the sin 
of the world, in his glorious resurrection and 
ascension, in the coming of the Holy Ghost, 
and in the life of the world to come. Believing 
thus, he is not free, and cannot wish to be free, 
to stultify and contradict his own belief by be- 
lieving the contrary at the same time. Being a 
Christian, he is not free, and cannot wish to be 
free, to think like an infidel. His thoughts are 
pledged in glad captivity to his Lord, whose 
service is perfect freedom for the intellect no 
less than for the will. On the other hand, the 
anti-Christian free thinker believes that Jesus 
Christ is not God at all, that he did not die 
to redeem mankind or rise again for their justi- 
fication, that he has not ascended into heaven, 
does not sit at the right hand of God the Father, 



Free T J linking. 235 

will not come again to judge the world, and will 
not give eternal life to his people. In a certain 
sad sense, doubtless, he is free to believe thus. 
But, believing thus, he is not free in any sense 
at all to believe the contrary at the same time. 
While believing as he does, he is no more free 
to think like a Christian than a Christian is 
to think like him. His thoughts are bound as 
fast in the captivity of his unbelief as the Chris- 
tian's thoughts in the obedience of faith. He 
has no freedom to bestow if he conquers the 
world. He is a mere propagandist after all. 
His thoughts are systematized and stereotyped. 
He has names to swear by, and hoary traditions, 
and sacred books, and a notable index libronun 
prohibit or nm, and what does service excellently 
well for the most rancorous odium tJieologicimi 
ever known. Let me add that his whole pe- 
culiar system is negative, and leads to pure 
nothing. He generally teaches much positive 
truth, to be sure ; but that is incidental, and all 
the positive truth he teaches is as much at the 
service of his antagonists as at his own, while 
the greatest and most fruitful thoughts of his 
antagonists are wholly out of his reach. 

If the contention be, not for any of the shad- 



236 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

owy forms of freedom which we have noticed, 
and not really for freedom of thought at all, 
but for immunity from the natural conse- 
quences of thought, and for escape from the 
proper responsibility of men for the thoughts 
which they actively represent in human society, 
the contention is intelligible enough, — just as 
intelligible, indeed, as the base struggle of weak 
and wicked men to escape the proper conse- 
quences of their own acts. 

Our thoughts may be false and misleading 
and injurious to society. Still we are free to 
think them and to speak them : but we have no 
right to complain if we lose the confidence and 
countenance of good men thereby ; and we 
ought not to wonder if the most hospitable 
doors in our neighborhood are jealously closed 
against us. Evil, erring thoughts corrupt good 
manners most deeply and irremediably, and 
honest people may have to treat those who 
spread them as they would treat burglars and 
assassins. 

On the other hand, our thoughts may be 
better, greater, truer than the thoughts of some 
of our neighbors, and those neighbors may, in 
sheer weakness and confusion, distrust and op- 



Free Thinking. 237 

pose the higher truth. Shall we fume and 
storm and waste our time because the people 
are not ready for the truth ? Or shall we who 
are strong bear the infirmities of the weak, and 
witness a good confession in a time of trial, suf- 
fering persecution cheerfully, and rejoicing in 
all humiliation whereby we may prepare the 
way for the truth which must prevail at last ? 
Thought is not a light or frivolous matter. 
It is most serious and weighty. It is our life, 
and it touches the life of others. For this 
reason, we must think with perfect freedom ; 
and for the very same reason, we must think 
with full responsibility. Every man should 
think day by day, as the noble Strafford de- 
liberately served his unworthy master, at the 
peril of his head ; and the great oath of Straf- 
ford is the proper oath for every thinker who 
has occasion to swear : " On the peril of my 
life, and that of my children." 



LECTURE XI. 

HOBBIES. 

It is very difficult to mete out the proper 
measure of praise or blame, of admiration or 
pity, to persons who earnestly pursue what 
may be called hobbies of a moral and reforma- 
tory character. Our first impulse is, perhaps, 
to condemn them, for narrowing and darken- 
ing their lives by sacrificing to one idea or pur- 
pose the many graces of a catholic culture and 
a generous social life. A broad, symmetrical, 
cheerful culture of mind and life is exceedingly 
desirable : but it is constantly sacrificed, with 
little compunction and with very general ap- 
proval, for reasons not more satisfactory, per- 
haps, than these grim hobbies can plead. For 
instance, the most sour-faced hobby of them 
all does not exclude liberal culture as complete- 
ly as the luxurious, beaming indolence and in- 
difference which we meet at every turn without 
any irritation. Why should we fret about the 

238 



Hobbies. 239 

sacrifice of the earnest hobbyist, and take no 
account of the far greater sacrifice of the gay, 
self-indulgent crowd all around us ? 

Then, consider how unfriendly to universal 
culture are many of the occupations by which 
men earn their daily bread. It is not given to 
every man to take all knowledge for his province, 
or to make industrious and select reading or the 
writing of epic poems his portion in life. Many 
good men spend the livelong day, year in and 
year out, at drudging tasks, which cramp mind 
and body alike. Yet we blame them not, and 
we do not presume to pity them. They are 
justified, not merely by the necessity of their 
condition, but much more by the value of their 
services to mankind. They are straitened that 
others may be enlarged : and to lose individual 
culture, and even life, for the sake of others, is 
neither blameworthy nor inglorious. 

• ' Some kinds of baseness 
Are nobly undergone ; and most poor matters 
Point to rich ends." 

If hobbies, then, can be proved to benefit 
mankind, though they stunt and oppress their 
votaries, they have the same justification as the 



240 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

common business of life. And as many occu- 
pations, though cramping in the extreme during 
the hours of toil, allow generous leisure at the 
close of the day and a blessed Sabbath once a 
week, and even by limiting leisure hours often 
make them more precious and fruitful than the 
solid days and years of the unemployed, even 
so the severest hobbies must allow some spare 
moments for the cultivation of general knowl- 
edge and social intercourse ; and great hobby- 
ists have been known to make an admirable use 
of such moments. There are also hobbies, as 
there are common occupations, which them- 
selves lead to varied knowledge and experience 
of the world as directly as the most exhaustive 
academic course that ever was devised. 

But, waiving the direct personal interests of 
the hobbyists themselves, are hobbies a pest or 
a blessing to mankind ? The question refers, of 
course, not to trivial, pitiful, personal hobbies, 
verging on dotage or blank insanity, but to 
those which are inspired by ideas, and which 
contemplate the progress of society or the 
destiny of the race. Are these serious, far- 
reaching, public-spirited hobbies a help or a 
hindrance to our real advancement? If we look 



Hobbies. 241 

to the past, it is difficult to withhold from them 
the very highest praise. It seems as if they 
had done much of the very best work of the 
world. Human society does not owe its noblest 
possessions either to the simultaneous efforts of 
all its members or to the steady, harmonious 
march of powerful parties. Powerful parties 
and the great multitude have generally taken 
part in a good fight very late in the day. The 
long night-watch, the fierce charge at daybreak, 
and the raging battle till its strength is broken, 
have all been borne by a devoted few : and 
those few have not been men who had mas- 
tered all the details of all the universe so as to 
be able to provide for all things at once, and fore- 
see precisely how every thing was to turn out, 
but men who were possessed by certain truths 
or ideas, which they. trusted absolutely, and 
proceeded to carry out without hesitation or 
compromise, leaving other truths and other in- 
terests to such maintenance as the Providence 
of God might raise for them also. Such men, 
appearing among us to-day, would be called 
hobbyists. Do we need them or not ? 

We can scarcely deny that we have needed 
them at our very doors quite recently. But 



242 Prejudiced Inqu tries, 

yesterday, the emancipation of the Negro was 
a hobby, and a very weak and ridiculous hobby 
it seemed in our established social and political 
systems. Wise and good men, even in 
schools and sanctuaries, laughed it to scorn. 
Temperance, likewise, though a matter of life 
and death, was long cared for seriously by hob- 
byists alone ; and it can hardly be trusted out 
of their hands yet, although a national interest 
in it is awaking. It seems that the mass of a 
Christian nation in the nineteenth century, as 
of less-favored nations in darker times, can live 
contented, priest and people alike, in strong- 
holds of iniquity, until some elect persons are 
awakened and made a spectacle, marching about 
and blowing loud trumpets ; at first in shabby 
helplessness amidst jeers and laughter, and at 
last victoriously amidst crumbling walls and 
falling towers, like the chosen people around 
Jericho. 

We need hobbyists, then, to keep us from 
dwelling at ease in the midst of abominations. 
We need them to urge us forward to our proper 
good, as well as to deliver us from abuses. We 
even need them when we have great, lofty 
ideals in view, about as much as when we dwell 



Hobbies. 243 

in gross darkness without discerning good or 
evil. Great ideals charm us easily. Their 
truth and beauty are unmistakable ; but, to 
our sensual, unheroic natures, they seem wholly 
inapplicable to the practical life of our times. 

We have the highest ideal in politics, gov- 
ernment by the people, and for the people, in 
city and State and throughout the Union. We 
glory in this ideal. We tell the nations of the 
earth that it is emphatically our own. But with 
all our pride in our shining ideal, and with all the 
freedom to realize it that it is possible for a peo- 
ple to have, how helplessly we sit down and look 
upon great cities and mighty States manipu- 
lated and pocketed like playthings, to the great 
injury of the people, by the least illustrious of 
oligarchies ! We glory in our political ideal and 
groan over the actual situation at the same time. 

So, again, we have the highest ideal possible 
for our individual and social life, in the Chris- 
tian revelation. Some among us may have 
misgivings about the deeper mysteries of the 
Christian faith ; but those who deny and 
blaspheme the faith extol the moral ideal. It 
is the recognized ideal of us all, and a higher 
we cannot conceive. But its very excellence 



244 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

destroys its effect with most of us. " The pre- 
cepts of Christ are more at variance with the 
lives of ordinary Christians than the discourse 
of Utopia," just because ordinary Christians re- 
gard them as more purely ideal, — more deserv- 
ing of admiring contemplation, but also more 
completely inapplicable to the individual and 
social life of the present day than Utopia itself. 
The phrase, ordinary Christians, in the above 
statement, may be misleading. It is not in- 
tended to indicate a class among Christian 
people, but Christian people in general, includ- 
ing the best-informed and the most given to 
reflection. In fact, if we think of classes at all, 
perhaps there is no class among Christians to 
which the Christian ideal seems more hopelessly 
sundered from reality, and is therefore become 
more unprofitable except for purely artistic 
purposes, than to the highly educated and 
studious class. 

Even when we have high ideals, then, we 
need sturdy, uncompromising hobbyists, to 
dare, alone, to believe that the ideals have 
life in them and are good for something be- 
sides artistic representation ; and to dare also 
to crack and displace the common world and 



Hobbies. 245 

the things that are in it, to make room for the 
realization of the ideals. For what the inap- 
plicability of great ideals to the practical life 
of our times means is, simply that you cannot 
reform the world and also leave it just as it is. 
The hobbyists understand this well enough ; 
but they believe in their ideals so heartily that 
they are willing that every thing in the world 
that is incompatible with them should perish ; 
and they will work on undismayed though the 
earth be removed and though the mountains be 
carried into the midst of the sea. Without 
such courage and enterprise the brightest ideals 
will remain forever barren ; yet, to the great 
majority of civilized persons, such ventures 
seem most fanatical and pernicious. Therefore, 
we need hobbyists, not only to call forth ideals 
in our gross, unthinking life, but also to give 
energy to the ideals we have, and save them 
from becoming a sublime mockery, and to save 
ourselves from being over-awed and paralyzed 
by the world and by our own knowledge and 
wisdom. 

Thus it appears that hobbies have answered 
a good purpose in the world, and that they are 
still needed, seeing that much good remains to 



246 Prej^td^ced Inqu tries. 

be done which is in no way of being done with- 
out them. But what of all that, my country- 
men ? We have been looking at one side. We 
must look at the other. 

We cannot give full scope to hobbies though 
they may sometimes have pioneered a good 
cause : and though the world is always set in 
evil ways and needs much rousing, we cannot 
always heed the sound of a trumpet. Hobbies 
have done good, we freely admit ; but they 
have seldom done all the good alone ; much 
credit is often due to the hootings, and brick- 
bats, and dungeons, and gallows-trees of the 
opposite side. Before the hobbies alone the 
world could not stand long enough to be re- 
formed, and a reformed world could not abide 
while we beheld what manner of world it was. 
As long as a shred of our earthly life remains, 
there will always be something for a hobby to 
cast out as evil. Our earthly life is tied up in 
finite, adamantine bonds ; hobbies are fancy's 
children, and will fret and chafe at our world 
until it is resolved into a pure, bodiless, in- 
vulnerable idea. They will find grievances and 
scandals wherever they please to look for them. 
As the microscope can find nasty creeping 



Hobbies. 247 

things everywhere, even in the sparkling, re- 
freshing water, which is the aptest symbol of 
purity itself, so these hobbies will turn their 
witching ideas upon the most admired arrange- 
ments of our life, and find them teeming with 
Egyptian plagues ; and, like the potent rod of 
Amram's son, when they have rid us of one 
pest, they will smite again and discover another 
brood still more insufferable. We could bear 
to be convulsed and rent asunder to obtain de- 
liverance from usurping demons, if we could 
afterwards be healed and clothed and live in 
our right minds in peace. But we cannot bear 
to be kept on the rack of a great deliverance 
perpetually, cured of evil after evil only that 
we may live to undergo severer operations for 
ever and ever. Yet this is the prospect which 
hobbies hold out for us ; for the commonest 
and most unlikely matters yield towering griev- 
ances, which easily connect themselves with the 
most sacred interests of mankind, and are made 
to cry for redress with a voice which all must 
hear and an argument which none can gainsay. 
To satisfy ourselves of this, we need but 
glance at some of the minor hobbies of the 
day. Take, as one of the most apposite in- 



248 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

stances, the women's dress reform. Who in 
the world could have imagined that any reform 
was necessary or possible here? In the first 
place, women are themselves natural reformers. 
They have deep intuitions of the true and the 
beautiful. They have quick sympathies and 
strong impulses on the right side. Above all, 
they have a boundless capacity of self-sacrifice. 
Believing all this, we have long been striving to 
give them more authority in the world, not only 
because it is their just right, but also because 
the world needs their cleansing, renovating 
touch. Results have justified all the confi- 
dence we have placed in them. The women 
of our age have supported and inspired and 
led us in every good work. Can it be possible 
that they who are so thoughtful about the re- 
mote interests of the wide world have forgot- 
ten to give any thought to a matter so near 
them and so important as their own clothing ? 
No, it is not possible. The women of our day 
have not grown more indifferent than the 
women of other ages to the question, where- 
withal they shall be clothed. New interests, 
and new duties, learning, fame, politics, philan- 
thropy, and all the rest have detracted nothing 



Hobbies. 249 

from this world-old occupation. The enlarged, 
invigorated, overcrowded minds of the women 
of to-day condescend cheerfully to give to the 
whole matter of dress, down to the most in- 
finitesimal point, an attention as unstinted and 
loving as was ever bestowed upon it by the 
simpler minds of the olden time. Seeing, then, 
that women are intelligent, zealous, sweeping re- 
formers, and that they have never ceased to give 
much time and thought to this particular ques- 
tion, and that the whole concern is also entirely 
in their own power, we might reasonably hope 
that the hobbyists themselves would have to 
admit that, here at least, they are forestalled, — 
that here, if nowhere else under the sun, is one 
matter of some consequence in which they can 
suggest no material improvement. Vainest of 
vain hopes ! There is scarcely a careless work 
of heedless, blundering man more riddled with 
deadly objections than this masterpiece of the 
long and serious thought of woman. The 
charges against it take away our breath, and 
cause our heads to swim. We are like them 
that dream in our astonishment and disappoint- 
ment. The evil found here is solemnly declared 
to be more outrageous than drunkenness, — 



250 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

not only more deliberate and more unpro- 
voked, but more deeply and widely disastrous 
than even that fiery scourge. Drunkenness is 
put under the ban of all good men, and deliv- 
ered unto Satan by all honorable women, and 
has to hide its ungracious head " under the 
cope of hell." This other evil, it is said, is 
delicately nurtured in the best families, and 
commended to young people by grave parental 
authority, while its unhallowed wares are con- 
spicuously advertised, as a matter of course, by 
religious publications of the highest preten- 
sions ; all Christendom thus uniting to nurse 
the desolating evil in its bosom. But are we 
really not dreaming or raving ? Where is the 
evil, and where is the desolation ? What is the 
grain of sense, if there be so much, in this windy 
indictment ? Wherein does woman's thorough- 
ly studied and elaborately prepared apparel vio- 
late the sacred law of the world ? 

Long ago, when the minds of women rusted 
in bondage, or still bore marks of their long 
captivity, there used to be complaints that 
they were given to a wanton, wasteful, ostenta- 
tious, ridiculous excess in their apparel. The 
gentlest and greatest of the prophets rebuked 



Hobbies. 251 

the daughters of Zion for the bravery of their 
tinkling ornaments, and their round tires like 
the moon, and other trumpery : and after the 
lapse of many ages, the gentlest and greatest of 
the apostles had still to entreat the women of 
his day to adorn themselves in modest apparel, 
with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with 
braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array. 
The fathers, Greek and Latin, contended with 
the same evil all their days. It lingered among 
Christian women even after the Reformation, 
calling forth a vigorous protest in the Book of 
Homilies, and a rousing sermon from John 
Wesley. At last, the emancipation of women 
came, and what prophets, and apostles, and 
fathers, and bishops, and John Wesley failed 
to bring about, has come about of itself. The 
sumptuary part of the dress question is very 
happily settled ; and we hear no more reprov- 
ing of tinkling ornaments or costly array. The 
pastor no more worries the flock. The church 
no longer teases the world. World, church, 
pastor, and all are satisfied with one another's 
sobriety in apparel. For what was not fore- 
seen by the prophets, or revealed to the apos- 
tles, has been fairly discovered at last,— that 



252 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

. shamefacedness and sobriety are never so beau- 
tiful as when combined with braided hair, and 
gold, and pearls, and costly array, the costlier 
the better ; and that the inward adorning of a 
meek and quiet spirit and the outward adorn- 
ing of a rich and finished toilet are necessary 
and most effective helpers, the one of the other; 
so that sumptuous apparel, richly bedecked with 
gems and gold, is, to the ripened, emancipated 
world, a means of grace, and a powerful instru- 
ment for Christian work. Who would with- 
hold riches, then, from this beautiful and bless- 
ed service ? What better use can the abounding 
wealth, which God has entrusted to the Ameri- 
can people, be put to against the day of ac- 
count ? Surely, no enlightened hobbyist, in 
view of all this, can object to the female 
apparel of our time on the old prophetic and 
apostolic score of wanton, wicked, ridiculous 
excess. 

Nor will many dare even to mention openly 
another disgraceful charge which some have in- 
sinuated in secret, — that our fashionable wom- 
en, in some of their most fashionable assem- 
blies, appear indecently attired, impudently 
tricked out to betray and to invite forbidden 



Hobbies. 253 

thoughts. It is strange that anybody should 
be found to invent such base nonsense. I have 
no occasion to descant on the romantic purity 
and delicacy of fashionable society, but it is 
monstrous to insinuate that any shadow of 
taint appears in the attire of our gayest, 
lightest circles. Entire nations live all the 
day long with scantier clothing than the 
scantiest ever displayed among us for a few 
hours on great occasions, and the noblest 
thinker of Greece would have pronounced 
the ladies and gentlemen of those simple 
races greatly over-dressed for co-education in 
the Palestra. The truth would seem to be 
that our women, in general, anticipating pru- 
dish, ill-natured criticism, run, with quaint 
good-humor, to such ultra-Puritanic lengths 
in veiling every sign and covering up the 
very remembrance of the human form, that 
any brilliant reminder of the real human be- 
ings rolled up in the familiar stacks strikes 
the unaccustomed beholders with confusion 
and fear. Who will say that the ladies are 
not entitled to this merry revenge on the 
stupid admirers of the ascetic disguises which 
they assumed in a mischievous frolic ? If 



254 Prejtidiced Inquiries. 

any find this view of the matter light and un- 
satisfactory, I will not defend it, though de- 
fence is said to be a good cause. Let those 
who are dissatisfied proceed in their own way 
till they are annihilated with a lofty honi soit, 
etc. 

But shall woman's dress, because it thus tri- 
umphs over ancient foes, finally escape the 
meddling hobbies? By no means. Escaping 
from fear, it shall fall into a pit, and getting 
up out of the pit, it shall be taken in a snare ; 
fleeing from a lion, a bear shall meet it. Its 
victories but lure it to hotter fields. It has 
trampled upon Isaiah and Peter and Paul ; it 
has flung fathers and bishops and the holiest 
saints, "with scattered arms and ensigns," into 
the merciless, oblivious deep. But what avails 
it all ? The battle waxes sorer than ever. The 
solemn theological and metaphysical hosts are 
routed, but the goodly tents and fresh powers 
of positive science cover the heights and the 
plains far and near, and the pitiless hobbyists 
have made a covenant with them, and, after so 
many rebuffs, they confidently expect to pre- 
vail at last, deeming their present allies more 
formidable to this profane generation than all 



Hobbies. 255 

the fellowship of the prophets and the com- 
pany of the apostles. 

The last, heaviest charge against the brave, 
battered apparel is, not that it is heathenish, or 
immodest, or wasteful, or ridiculous— not that 
it offends directly against the life of the soul, 
but that it seriously damages the body to be- 
gin with. This is business. Now the charge 
will be heard. At last the hobbyists have 
found their true weapon, and the fair defend- 
ers will be driven, however unreasonably, to a 
corner, where they must surrender without con- 
dition, or discredit their emancipation and their 
culture, and close their career as philanthropists 
by throwing themselves prone athwart the path 
of a humane reform which is backed by all the 
array of modern science. 

If you doubt the seriousness of the situation, 
just look at a single encounter. There goes a 
man who, through the ministration of good 
women, has been rescued from intemperance. 
He also would be a ministering angel, and, as 
is most meet, he would first serve his generous 
deliverers. He wends his way to the most in- 
fluential and best-dressed lady in the village, 
who also was foremost in the movement by 



256 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

which he was saved. In her presence he is 
quite abashed. He feels "how awful goodness 
is," but he is persuaded that all the goodness 
stoops to folly on one side, and he constrains 
himself to fulfil his ministry. 

" I hate to tell what I came for, madam," he 
begins, " but you faced every thing to save me, 
and I will not be sheepish. I came to talk to 
you about those barbarous things that you and 
all the ladies are wearing." 

" You have a mind for pleasantry this morn- 
ing," replied the lady. " I am delighted to see 
you so gay." 

" I have no mind for pleasantry at all. I 
have done with gayety for ever. I came to 
talk seriously with you on the subject I men- 
tioned." 

" But it is impossible for a lady and a gentle- 
man to talk seriously together about such 
things. Those matters are surely for us alone 
to manage, and you have greater things to 
occupy you." 

" I used to think that my drinks and my 
sprees were my own concern, and all the other 
boys thought so. Yet you ladies did not hesi- 
tate to make what concerned us your concern 



Hobbies. 257 

also. You troubled yourselves very much 
about what seemed to us entirely our own 
business. I confess that we were greatly an- 
noyed at the time, but now we feel deeply 
grateful to you, and I have come to pay part 
of my debt." 

" Oh ! You are very kind, I am sure, but the 
cases are entirely different." 

" Pardon me, dear madam, the cases are ex- 
actly alike." 

" But you were, — excuse me for reminding 
you, — you were on the road to ruin, and our 
common humanity entitled us to save you." 

" And you, — it grieves me sorely to say 
it, — you are on the highway to ruin, and 
our common humanity bids us attempt your 
rescue." 

" This is too ridiculous. Some furious idiot 
has been stuffing you. We are very comfort- 
able, I assure you. Do you suppose we would 
torture ourselves, to gain nothing and to please 
nobody ? " 

" And were we not comfortable in our old 
revels ? Did we complain aloud of aching 
heads and sore bones ? Did not the neighbor- 
hood often ring all night long with our merry 



258 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

carousing? Truly we had comforts which it 
seemed extremely hard to give up." 

'Yet you know, and all the world knows, 
that Bacchanalian comfort is a short, swift road 
to perdition. It is mapped out clearly in the 
miserable history of many of your acquaint- 
ances, as well as in the scientific works with 
which you are not unfamiliar." 

" The way your comfort leads is not so easy 
to trace in the map of common experience. It 
is a covered road, on which disasters may occur 
every day, and the outside world be never the 
wiser. But in the blessed scientific works of 
which you speak, this hidden destruction is un- 
covered and mapped out as clearly as the 
drunkard's downright path into the abyss. 
Rather than presume to argue with you, then, 
I would humbly beseech you to examine these 
scientific books— all of the highest authority— 
which I have brought with me. Be good 
enough to pay particular attention to the pic- 
tures, no fancy pictures, as you will observe. 
If these fail to do more than raise questions and 
doubtful thoughts in your mind, I can order 
your admission to the dissecting-room at the 
hospital, where opportunities will be given you 



Hobbies. 259 

to look with your own eyes upon that which 
may well make what you call furious idiots of 
us all." 

" I perceive that you are the victim of hasty 
generalizations. Extreme cases find their way 
to the dissecting-rooms and get pictured as curi- 
osities in the books. What if, among ten 
thousand women, one vain simpleton abuse 
the habits of her sex to her own destruction ? 
If we cared to be pictured for the public gaze, 
we could furnish unexceptionable specimens 
from the most fastidiously dressed among us 
all ; and if we have the misfortune to come to 
your dissecting-rooms at the last, I will warrant 
you there will be no great show for your idiots. 
You would plead against our whole society the 
irrational performances of erratic individuals: 
and when you mention this foolish subject as 
at all to be compared with intemperance, you 
forget that the evil you allude to, even when 
most flagrant, begins and ends with itself, and 
finds its perpetrator and its sole victim in one 
person, while drunkenness leads to every sin 
and shame, and involves in its dire consequences 
the innocent as well as the guilty." 

" Then you, who see through the whole tern- 



2 60 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

perance question so clearly, have never had 
one glimpse of this other matter. The drunk- 
ard's path, though short, has two ends. At one 
end, I could have my picture taken, or be dis- 
sected, without shame. At the other end, alive 
or dead, I should want to sink into some deep, 
dark pit, and be out of sight forever. There 
are loathsome wretches at this shameful end of 
the road. There are bright, noble fellows at 
the other end. But the majority of drinking 
men are to be found, and the evil work of 
drunkards is mostly done, at different points 
along the road between the two extremes. So 
it is with your road. The erratic individuals, 
as you call your weaker sisters, have not strayed 
from the path ; they have but followed it to 
the bitter end. You are at the good end. The 
road is not deserted all the way between you. 
Probably all intermediate points are thronged. 
If they are, dream not that your sisters along 
that highway do no harm besides the bodily 
injury which they inflict upon themselves. 
They cannot thus sin against their own bodies 
without unfitting themselves to fulfil the ends 
of nature and Divine Providence in their 
lives; and they cannot wilfully unfit them- 



Hobbies. 261 

selves to fulfil the ends of life without either 
fulfilling those ends ill, at ruinous cost to 
themselves and to others, or entering into 
direct conflict with the order of the world 
and into an impious league with the whole 
mystery of iniquity to avoid or defeat those 
ends. And were this not so, is the sad fate 
of the erratic individuals, who get pictured 
and dissected for their folly, not sad enough to 
excite some pity in their noble sisters, and even 
sad enough to be averted, seeing that it could 
be averted easily and without loss to anybody? 
I was taught — and blessed forever be those 
who taught me — that as long as I indulged in 
strong drink, whether I suffered any direct 
harm from it myself or not, I was guilty of the 
sin and the shame and the sorrow which it 
brought upon all mankind : and I consented to 
abandon it, not from any sense of immediate 
peril to myself, but that I might be free from 
the blood of all others. For this great lesson, 
madam, I am indebted chiefly to you ; and you 
must pardon me if I cannot but think of the 
appeal of Scripture, — ' Thou therefore which 
teachest others, teachest thou not thyself ? ' Go, 
I pray you, and set an example which cannot 



262 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

be abused to any one's destruction ; walk in a 
path which can be safely followed to the very 
end. " 

" My dear friend, I see that you are in earn- 
est, and I will excuse this strange outburst of 
your misguided zeal. But we cannot pursue 
this most incongruous conversation any further. 
You will not distinguish between things that 
are wider apart than the poles. You mix 
every thing all up. Is your wife pretty well 
this morning ? " 

" I thank you, my wife is quite well. But 
permit me to say one word more. I consulted 
with a number of friends before I came here, 
and we decided that, if I failed to bring you 
over to our view of the matter in hand, I was 
to ask your permission for myself and my 
friends to come and pray with you on the sub- 
ject this afternoon." 

" How dare you ! Who ever heard of such a 
thing ? I thought you were in earnest, though 
badly confused. But I see that you are only 
bent on ribaldry, and that you are not afraid 
even of blasphemy. I hope you will see that you 
have gone a great deal too far, and that I cannot 
allow even my friends to trifle with me thus." 



Hobbies. 263 

" I am extremely sorry to offend you. But 
we are all serious even to solemnity. We 
should shrink as much as yourself, I doubt not, 
from blasphemy and ribaldry. We are influ- 
enced solely by earnest convictions ; and we 
must follow the brave example you gave us. 
If you will not admit us into the house, we will 
hold our meeting on the door-steps." 

It is clear what the sequel must be unless 
the hobbyists meet with some timely disaster. 
From this meek mission work they will proceed 
to rough political agitation. They will start a 
new party, and bray on every stump in the 
Union; and either they will carry their point 
at some irresolute moment in the popular 
mind, and amend the Constitution to suit their 
notion, or the ladies of the whole land, to save 
a remnant of their menaced dignity, will antici- 
pate the calamity, and petition that they may 
be commanded to pay a little personal tax, and 
be clothed neatly and comfortably by a public 
board of health, without any thought or labor 
of their own. When this reformed system has 
prevailed a while, and our women have grown 
robust and powerful, the idea will dawn upon 
some wakeful minds that the gross bodily 



264 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

health growing so prevalent under the new 
system profiteth little in comparison with per- 
sonal freedom and the development and occu- 
pation and satisfaction of the aesthetic nature 
of women which independence in dress might 
secure. Health will be too common to inspire 
any enthusiasm or to point any argument. 
The new hobby will sweep with hurricane fury 
along the track of the old, and we shall have all 
the brilliant, reckless, boundless extravagance 
of a restoration. 

Thus may hobbies rise at any spot out of the 
quiet ground at the mere sound of a whistle, 
like the armed bands of some mountain chief, 
and brush away our oldest manners and most 
cherished customs like cobwebs ; and then, 
with equal zeal and violence, bring them back 
again, when we have ceased to mourn for them. 
And thus do we stand in the sorriest plight 
between our indolent helplessness without the 
stimulus of the hobbies and our harassed and 
terrified helplessness in their presence. 

Come what will, however, we cannot repudi- 
ate the hobbies altogether. They faintly repre- 
sent true ideas when they disturb and embarrass 
us the most. They serve some part of the 



Hobbies. 265 

infinitely diversified truth and life of the world 
both when they build and when they pull down. 
Rather than suppress them, we should, if pos- 
sible, balance and complete their work. One 
conceivable and not unpopular way to do this 
is by fostering " liberty " and bidding it increase 
and multiply original and forcible individuali- 
ties to its full capacity ; by summoning to the 
field new hobbies by the legion, and urging 
them all to do their utmost in all opposite 
ways ; by offering prizes for strange hobbies 
unheard of before, and pressing every man to 
be as original as possible and to be always 
striking hard at something or other ; and by 
cursing bitterly every tranquil Meroz in the 
land. In the " universal hubbub wild " that 
we should thus raise, perhaps all ideas would 
be fittingly represented, and one thing would 
perfectly balance another, and the jars and dis- 
cords, if there be but plenty of them, would 
make one vast music filling the world. 

But if the world is too fearfully and wonder- 
fully made to be set right and governed by any 
haphazard activity, or even by any deliberate, 
preconcerted activity of ours, perhaps it is not 
left altogether to our management. Our work 



266 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

may be quite secondary. Our places and 
our tasks, and our personal gifts may be as- 
signed unto us by One who seeth, and sus- 
taineth, and overruleth all. If we could be 
sure that it is so, and, especially, if we could 
know something of the central, governing pur- 
poses of the supreme mind, we might learn to 
sympathize and co-operate with the good in 
every high-minded hobby, and yet hold the 
general, continuous order of the world too 
sacred to be lightly disturbed. The Christian 
faith supplies the assurance and the light we 
need ; and it brings us into bona-fide sympathy 
with all humanitarian hobbyists, without sub- 
jecting us to their limitations. All human 
ideals, celestial and terrestrial, the serenest 
and the most revolutionary alike, point to, and 
are merged in, Christian ideals ; and the Chris- 
tian ideals are justified, and seriously set forth 
as practical ends, by the Christian faith. Their 
full realization is not to be attained in any in- 
dividual life or in any separate community, it 
is true, but only in the complete body of 
Christ, gathered from all ages and climes. Yet 
the true believer, being a partaker of the life 
of the body, while he has his own distinct place 



Hobbies. 267 

and office to fill, is not to rest satisfied with any 
thing short of the perfection of the whole. This 
perfection, certainly, is not to be attained by 
any outbursts of the wrath of man. The per- 
fection of mankind is not to be wrought by 
mankind alone. Not by might, or by power, 
but by the Spirit of the Lord is the great con- 
summation to be effected. But the Spirit of 
the Lord, in this work, operates in and through 
the spirit of man, quickening and directing it to 
work out His own glorious and blessed will ; so 
that the end is reached, after all, no less by the 
faith and obedience of man than by the power 
and faithfulness of God. The individual Chris- 
tian, then, is entrusted and charged, in an im- 
portant sense, with the realization of the highest 
Christian ideals. This is his business in the world 
as a Christian. 

But if the Christian believer accepts this his 
proper mission, and lives by faith, what manner 
of man will he be ? Wherein will he differ from 
a common hobbyist ? He will certainly not be 
better satisfied with the world as it is. He will 
not be less at variance with its ordinary spirit 
and practice. He will not be less frank and out- 
spoken where he is at variance with the world ; 



268 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

and he will not be less scrupulous and uncom- 
promising in ordering his own steps aright. It 
is safe to add that he will not be more admired 
or better liked by the world than the most ordi- 
nary hobbyist. Woe betide the Christian who 
is the idol and darling of all men ! He sits un- 
becomingly high above the chiefest apostles and 
ominously high above his Master. Woe be also 
unto the Christian who goes through the world 
smoothly, the inoffensive, unoffended, undis- 
turbing, and undisturbed observer of an adulter- 
ous and sinful generation ! He has lost his 
savor. If he be a Christian indeed, then is the 
offence of the cross ceased ; the strait gate is 
removed, and the narrow way and the broad 
road are all one. Christ himself was from his 
birth set for a sign which should be spoken 
against. He and the children whom the Lord 
giveth unto him are also for signs and for won- 
ders in the fair, self-satisfied modern world. 

Yet, the true Christian is most unlike ordi- 
nary hobbyists. He is not less thorough than 
they are, but more thorough. They cleanse the 
outside of the cup and the platter. They re- 
form laws and customs. He knows that the 
evil is deeper, even in the hearts of men. He 



Hobbies. 269 

has found the root of all evil in his own heart ; 
and he has found salvation in Christ for himself 
and for all the world. He has given himself, 
body, soul, and spirit, to his Saviour. He re- 
news and confirms the gift day by day, seeking 
to do all things, the least and the greatest, in 
the name of the Lord Jesus and according to 
His will. His whole life is necessarily a witness 
and a struggle against the evils that are in the 
world, whatever form they take. But his whole 
life also, as necessarily, bears witness of the long- 
suffering and tender mercy and great power 
and unsearchable wisdom of God : and bearing 
such witness, he must himself be long-suffering 
and gentle and hopeful even in dealing with an 
evil world. A corrupt, unbelieving society can 
give the reckless hobbies no valid reason why 
they should spare it. The destroyers mean as 
well as the victims at least. But earnest, con- 
sistent Christian believers, if they are anywhere 
to be found, can reasonably plead for the world 
that it may be spared until the harvest, and yet 
labor more abundantly than all the hobbies to 
gather up the tares and burn them, when that 
can be done without risking the true crop. 



LECTURE XII. 

AUTHORSHIP. 

JUVENAL complained, nearly two thousand 
years ago, that an incurable itch for writing was 
taking hold of multitudes in his day. Doubt- 
less he had seen sorry heaps of literature under 
the sun. But what if he lived in this nine- 
teenth century, and knew our mammoth au- 
thors and publishers ! Would his satire be still 
more keen, or would the astounding diffusion 
and vigor of the " itch " at last convince him 
that it was not a disease at all, but a proper 
element of human nature, long discouraged and 
repressed, but now about to win for itself an 
honorable and secure place ? Almost every as- 
piration of man has been treated as a pestilence 
or a crime, and has been nourished by the blood 
of martyrs. Many better men than Thersites 
have been pounded black and blue for criticising 
kings and preparing the way for civil and politi- 
cal freedom. Others have been burned to cin- 

270 



A nt hor ship. 2 7 1 

ders for presuming to take an interest in their 
own souls. In very recent times, and very near 
unto us, it has seemed ridiculous and worthy 
of stripes for men to have an " itch " to call 
their wives and children and the labor of their 
hands their own. The desire for political and 
religious freedom and for civil rights is to-day 
stronger than ever ; but nobody calls it bad 
names any more. Now we understand that 
it was the kings, and the popes, and the petty 
lordlings, and not the people, that had an unnat- 
ural itch all the while. But the people have 
not come to all their own yet. Democracy 
is to spread its conquests still further. You 
have already a sovereign voice in the govern- 
ment of your country, and an open career in 
its service. You have secure homes and broad 
lands of your own. You enjoy the long-covet- 
ed freedom to worship God according to your 
own consciences. You have inherited blessings 
which many generations of your forefathers re- 
joiced but to see very far off. What remains 
but that the wish of the earliest and noblest of 
democrats be fulfilled for you, and that all the 
Lord's people of these States be prophets, and 
consequently, in the conditions of our time, au- 



272 Prejudiced Inqu tries, 

thors ? The popular itch for writing must be 
vindicated and gratified : and I am here to per- 
suade every man of you to shake off indolence 
and unbelief and all fear of arrogant criticism, 
and to begin at once a life-long career of quiet, 
brave, diligent authorship. 

You have the materials for the work, in un- 
imagined abundance, always at hand. The ma- 
terials for authorship are thoughts ; and who 
has not thoughts of all forms and colors com- 
ing and going through his head every moment ? 
They are your latest guests at night, and the 
first to greet you with returning day. They 
follow you to your labor and to your rest, into 
society and into solitude. They are busy al- 
ways, and busiest of all when you observe 
them least. If you could invent a machine 
to register them as they pass through your 
minds, you would be astonished at least at 
the number and variety of them. And yet 
the thoughts which actually pass through your 
minds are but the scouts and skirmishers of 
swarming hordes that press for entrance on 
every side. Your store of thoughts can never 
be exhausted or diminished. Your thoughts 
are not the productions of your own minds, 



A u thorsh ip. 273 

They inhabit eternity, and every pulsation of 
the life of nature wafts them on to you through 
all things, visible and invisible. Expressing 
some of them only makes room for others to 
rush in. The more you use the more you will 
have in reserve. Never shrink from authorship, 
then, for lack of materials or for fear of ex- 
haustion. 

But does not this argument for authorship 
prove too much, and make out all authorship 
nugatory and impertinent? If thoughts come, 
like the glory of the lilies, without toiling or 
spinning ; if they are, by the course of nature, 
new every morning and every moment, why 
should we yet toil and spin for them ? Why 
not rather be satisfied with every moment's nat- 
ural supply? Where is the wisdom of making 
a stagnant pool, with infinite pains, when the 
living stream runs for ever by your door? 
True, perhaps, the author will not exhaust his 
store of thoughts ; but will he not, on the other 
hand, lose the sweet benefit of the many by 
engrossing himself with the few, like the erring 
pair long ago who doted on one fair apple and 
sacrificed all the pleasant fruits of paradise? If 
thoughts come spontaneously in endless pro- 



2 74 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

cessions, why not let them come, and look on 
for ever without disturbing the pageantry? 
Amidst such generous profusion, is not quiet, 
contented enjoyment the truest thrift, the high- 
est wisdom, the most natural piety? 

Such questions might have seemed impres- 
sive in the morning of the world ; but in the 
ear of old experience they are void. The 
prodigality of nature is not intended to supply 
bread and sport for an idle rabble ; and when 
it is perverted to so base a purpose it becomes 
a curse. The blessed light of the sun and 
sweet life itself become weariness and corrup- 
tion to those who seek merely to enjoy them in 
unfruitful ease ; and the multitude of your 
thoughts will be no better than a plague of 
locusts if you stand idle in the midst of them ; 
but with attention and manly care on your 
part, they may become an innumerable com- 
pany of angels to bring you continually the 
riches of all the world, and to minister unto 
others at your bidding. The labors required 
for this end are severe and manifold ; but 
earnest, diligent authorship will be auxiliary 
to them all. 

You want, before all things, to know the 



A uthorsh ip. 275 

thoughts which throng about you, especially 
those which haunt you the most ; and you 
don't know them at all when you but dimly 
feel their mysterious presence, and faintly hear 
their inarticulate mutterings. Unexpressed 
thoughts are often in a mist, which distorts 
them into fantastic shapes and magnitudes, 
and casts a doubtful hue upon their intellectual 
and moral worth. The pen is Ithuriel's spear 
that reveals their proper size and quality. All 
who wield the pen with any force will aid you 
in this task of discerning- the spirits. Even the 
most fanatical poets and scribes of the flesh 
and the devil have done excellent service in 
setting forth clearly the ruling thoughts of 
those dread principalities ; thoughts which 
have often looked in upon you all, and which, 
perhaps, seemed more or less fair until you saw 
them adequately expressed. And how good it 
is to have your better thoughts made plain to 
you ! It is for this, and not for any ideas pe- 
culiarly their own, that you love and bless the 
nobler race of poets. But no poet or prophet 
can do all this work for you. You must toil at 
it yourselves. Toil then. Face your thoughts 
squarely, one by one, and set them forth firmly 



276 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

and clearly. If they suffer by the process, you 
gain. For henceforth, having been condemned 
by the light, they will not be so bold and im- 
portunate ; and, still coldly frowned upon, they 
will retire sullenly to outer darkness, drawing 
their voluminous train after them, and making 
room for brighter hosts. But if they are found 
worthy, you gain still more. For you can then 
bid them welcome, and invite their frequent re- 
turn, and at last adopt them as your own. 

The random thoughts which flit in and out 
at your window are not properly yours. They 
are strangers and foreigners ; candidates, per- 
haps, for a place in your household, but still 
free from any allegiance to you. And the 
more persistent thoughts which, without your 
clear approval or condemnation, still loiter 
about, like the suitors of Penelope, to court 
and amuse and alarm and devour you by turns, 
are not your thoughts for any good purpose, 
though you may be responsible for them. You 
want your own household, and court, and body- 
guard, of thoughts which you know and can 
absolutely trust, through which you can com- 
municate with the whole universe of thought 
p.nd do your work in the world, and in whose 



A uthorsh ip. 277 

arms you can die contented when your last 
hour comes. Authorship will be a valuable 
help, first, to choose your life thoughts, and 
afterwards to cherish them and use them to 
advantage* 

Authorship, forsooth ! Then, have all men 
excepting the talkers and the scribblers, up to 
this time, been strangers to their own thoughts, 
and helpless in the midst of them, or without 
any thoughts to call their own, in life or in 
death ? Do your greatest authors write their 
own thoughts merely or the deeds of heroes? 
Are the divinest poets greater than the heroes 
whom they celebrate ? Is the herald who pro- 
claims the victor greater than the victor him- 
self ? And, leaving out comparisons, have our 
great writers always, or even generally, been re- 
markable for discretion and the wise direction 
of their thoughts to fulfil the noblest ends of 
life ? Does not authorship manifest and spread 
a disease, a malignant fever raging at the heart, 
as often as the seeds of a better life ? Is not 
our common life, with its tasks and its trials, 
the true day which declares our thoughts ? 
And must not the discipline for life be found, 
and the work of life be done, in life itself 



2 78 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

rather than in lucubration and excellency of 
speech ? 

Yes, the training for life must be found, and 
the work of life must be done, in life itself. 
But life itself does not exclude lucubration 
and excellency of speech. Life itself is not 
complete without them. The poet and the his- 
torian have sometimes been pitiful figures in the 
stress of life for lack of pluck and principle 
and plain common-sense. But the most puis- 
sant heroes have also been unnecessarily ridicu- 
lous frequently for lack of disciplined thought 
and well-ordered speech. Ajax was the brav- 
est and strongest of the Greeks after Achilles ; 
but he is an awkward, inglorious, " beef-witted 
lord " before the world to this day ; and he is, 
alas, the head of a numerous tribe. But there 
have been heroes who were also poets. There 
have been men who made history, and also un- 
derstood it and wrote it. One-sidedness is not 
essential to excellence. It is possible to be et 
litno insignis et hastd. And in calling upon 
you to be authors, I do not call upon you to 
renounce the world and forsake all that you 
have and be wholly absorbed in this one pur- 
suit. I call upon you to adorn and solace and 



Authorship. 279 

complete your life by adding this accomplish- 
ment to your other occupations. I do not 
even cast any slur upon the memory of the 
fathers who never in their lives put pen to 
paper. They lived in another world — in a 
world where men had ears to hear and leisure 
for real conversation. They poured forth vol- 
ume after volume upon their own hearth-stone 
and by the wayside. But now men's ears are 
sealed up, and what was once committed to 
living men and women, must be entrusted to 
faithful sheets or to the idle winds ; and, on 
the whole, we must prefer the former. You 
are to write, not that you may be better than 
your fathers — though that would in no way be 
blameworthy, — but that you may not sink into 
an inarticulate or monosyllabic habit altogether 
unknown to them. 

But if everybody writes, who will read ? So 
we may ask, if everybody plants potatoes, who 
will go to the store to buy potatoes? If it is 
in every way convenient and profitable for you 
to plant potatoes, you will not abstain from 
planting them simply for the sake of patron- 
izing the potatoes in the store ; and, assur- 
edly, if you do grow your own vegetables, you 



280 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

will not supply your table with cost and trou- 
ble from the distant store, and leave your own 
crop in the ground or in the cellar. Now, it is 
perfectly convenient and very profitable for you 
to think, and also to bring your thoughts to the 
full, plump ripeness of language ; and it is nei- 
ther modesty nor generosity, but mere folly to 
go further in search of thoughts that will rot at 
your own door unless you gather them. You 
have a duty towards the thoughts of other peo- 
ple. It is your duty and privilege to hearken 
most reverently to the rare spirits who can 
speak unto you as from heaven. It is 
your plain duty also to listen patiently and 
cheerfully to very slim thoughts in your family, 
and in society, and in church sometimes, and 
especially in your own Backwoods Lecture- 
room. But when you come, as many of you 
do, to smother your own rising thoughts, and 
to pay out time and money to bring the com- 
monest mortals from their graves and from all 
their natural hiding-places to stuff you by day 
and by night with thoughts more prosy and un- 
wholesome than your own murdered innocents, 
it is time for some one to protest ; and I hereby 
make my protest, and invite you to turn from 



A nt hor ship. 2 8 1 

your dissolute mental habits to a steady career 
of earnest, independent authorship. 

But would not the devoted study of great 
authors be a better remedy? And is not the 
production of a commonplace literature about 
as unprofitable an employment as the reading 
of it? A distinguished living author says: 
" There are few thoughts likely to come 
across ordinary men which have not already 
been expressed by greater men in the best pos- 
sible way ; and it is a wiser, more generous, more 
noble thing to remember and point out the per- 
fect words than to invent poorer ones where- 
with to encumber temporarily the world." 
One of the " greater men " licensed to speak 
says all that, but we can hardly accept it as 
the final answer to the question before us. 

In the first place, men so tame and subdued as 
to be able to delegate the expression of all their 
best thoughts to others, and to " point out " 
words, even though they be perfect words, 
instead of speaking directly from a full and 
living heart, have not the stuff in them to 
make even readers of the truly great. It is 
those in whom the fire burns, and who, when 
occasion calls, will speak with the tongue, and 



282 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

with the pen also, though at the risk of encum- 
bering the world temporarily or even forever, 
that make the true readers of great books. The 
best thinker and writer you can find is also the 
best reader, though not the most voracious. 
Ripe or ripening thought will seek converse 
with its kind, and will be quick to recognize 
and do homage to excellence. 

In the second place, works of genius, read, 
marked, and inwardly digested, will inevitably 
urge the student to further thought and ex- 
pression. Great thoughts cannot be billeted 
on the mind to consume its substance and 
overawe its movements. It is the nature of 
thought to awaken thought ; and it is the na- 
ture of awakened thought to demand and find 
expression. Thus the supposed substitute for 
common authorship requires the energies of 
authorship in the popular mind before it will 
work, and, when it is set agoing, leads to more 
and more authorship as its direct result. Great 
authors are valuable as they make authors as 
well as men of their readers ; and readers are 
worthy as they not only walk in the light 
which they receive but also kindle their own 
torches and pass the light onward. 



A uthorsh ift. 283 

Is the great movement of democracy, then, 
to abolish intellectual property, and to conse- 
crate plagiarism as well as the cacoetJies scrib- 
endi ? Yes, plagiarism, if that is the word for 
the free appropriation of all available thought, 
is one of the rights of man. If you object to 
have your thought freely used, keep it to your- 
self. The law of literature is the old law of 
Sparta. Stealing is lawful, and praiseworthy, 
and necessary ; but to be caught stealing or 
harboring stolen goods is a crime and a dis- 
grace. In fact, this is the law of nature as 
well as of Sparta. All the trees of the forest, 
and all the flowers of the field, live by stealing 
from the soil and the atmosphere ; but the 
stealing is so deftly done that the despoiled 
powers cannot hope to identify their property. 
The pilfered stuff has become tree and flower. 
So it is, and so let it be, in literature. Pillage 
the wide world. Enrich yourself with the 
spoils of all time. Steal all you can find, only 
do not steal rubbish, and do not steal feebly 
and clumsily like an idiot. Put Homer and 
Plato boldly in your book ; but do not let 
them put on airs and talk Greek in English. 
Subdue them, and subdue all, to your own will 



284 Prejudiced Inqu tries. 

and purpose. Chew them down, take them 
into your very blood, let them be absorbed 
and lost in your own life, or you will be but a 
poor demoniac, foaming, and pining, and pos- 
sessed by incoherent legions. 

But works of genius make authors, not only 
by supplying rich materials for reproduction, 
but also by stimulating and kindling the minds 
of their readers often to such a degree that the 
fervent heat would dissolve any thing into 
workable material. 

If the very objections to common authorship 
thus declare in its favor, if the curse to be pro- 
nounced against it turn to a blessing in the 
prophet's mouth, you may well foresee the end 
and prepare for it. But what preparations can 
you make ? Favored individuals may be trained 
for authorship at the great schools ; and they 
may live all their days in learned leisure and in 
the society of the wise, whether in studious 
cloisters or in some inspiring Arcadia of pleas- 
ant fields and murmuring streams. They may 
well produce great works. But what can be 
done amid the distractions and limitations of 
common life ? Every thing that is worth doing. 
The groves of Academe and the backwoods of 



Authorship. 285 

Pennsylvania are much alike to the living 
mind : and Urania, descending from heaven, 
alights at the sheep-cote, and behind the plough 
upon the mountain side, as willingly as on the 
classic banks of Cam or Isis. The so-called dis- 
tractions of common life are but its opportuni- 
ties. The chief limitations of the mind are not 
matters of external condition. The most mo- 
mentous and inexorable of them all is " that 
order in nature's works whereby all things pro- 
duce their like." The mind, in every condition, 
will produce fruit according to its kind, and its 
kind is determined, not by circumstances, but 
partly by the Creator and partly by the man 
himself. So far as the mind is the work of 
God, its fruit will be a legitimate and becoming 
variety in nature. It may be unlike the recog- 
nized productions of any known school. It 
may be neither poetry nor prose according to 
accepted canons and prevailing tastes. But it 
is sent into the world, and honorable room 
must be found for it. If it belongs to no 
school known, it founds a new one of the most 
exclusive description. 

The necessary limitations of the mind, then, 
are no worse than the fences and ditches which 



286 PreJ7tdiced Inquiries. 

shut way-farers out from the open fields only to 
secure and hasten their destined journey. The 
disastrous limitations are those which men, in a 
more or less direct manner, impose upon them- 
selves, as, for instance, through indolence, or 
levity, or unbelief : and your first and greatest 
task, in a worthy career of authorship, will be 
to slay these hideous dragons that beset your 
mind's paths. The task is all the more serious 
because the monsters have learned to wear the 
attire and put on the airs of the Graces and of 
the Muses themselves. What jargon have you 
not heard about art for art's sake, about the 
non-moral character of poetry, about the abso- 
lute freedom of thought, and so forth ? Has 
art, or poetry, or thought, or have they all to- 
gether, rented a chamber in the human mind 
to carry on some business of their own unre- 
lated to man's life ? Nay, they have to do 
wholly with man's life ; and man is himself the 
artist, the poet, and the thinker. But man is 
nothing if not a reasonable creature with wise, 
serious moral purpose, with deep spiritual aspi- 
rations, and with responsibilities not to be 
evaded ; which purpose and aspirations and 
responsibilities, in the progress of the race, 



A tit hor ship. 287 

necessarily assume some fixed and ascertain- 
able forms, which must be held sacred by the 
soul of every man and by all that is within 
him. Your work, as authors, if severed from 
these essential characteristics of human nature, 
may be useful as new disclosures of some of 
the depths of Satan, but otherwise can be of 
little account to mankind. Your first care 
should be that your minds are human minds, 
rich and strong in the properly human life, and 
as distinct as possible from the beasts of the 
field and the birds of the air, and from the 
daintiest irresponsible spirit ever conceived, 
though it should leave even the delicate Ariel 
far behind. Deal with your minds faithfully in 
this respect, and then give them full freedom. 

Be not discouraged if, at first, they fail to 
respond to your call, or if your most desirable 
thoughts desert you just when you particularly 
need them. Catching your best thoughts is 
sometimes as hard a matter as shooting crows. 
Go among the crows with a loaded gun and a 
deadly purpose, and they all know you to be 
an untrustworthy person. There are plenty of 
them about ; but they all seem to have urgent 
business in every direction away out of your 



288 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

range. Leave your gun at home, or let it be 
unloaded, and every crow will recognize you as 
a man of peace, and will cross your path time 
and again and stare and scream confidingly in 
your face. Just so, if you parade your literary 
purposes too much, your choicest thoughts 
may take the alarm ; the choicest are almost 
always the shyest. You must often go among 
your thoughts unofficially, without pen or pa- 
per. Walk familiarly among them in the fields 
and the woods. Watch them quietly when 
they are off their guard. After a while they 
will get used to your scrutiny, and they will 
troop about you even in your study. Then 
you can sit down at your desk, and hold out to 
them any reasonable subject you choose, and 
they will fly to it as doves to their windows. 

But they will not do your work for you. 
They only bring you work ; and the more 
numerous they are, all the harder will your 
task be. When a man has but one idea, he 
ought to be able to dress it charmingly and 
place it properly, as people generally dress and 
place an only child ; but when thoughts rush 
in upon you like a flood, it takes much patient 
toil to provide for them. Some authors, when 



Authorship. 289 

they discover this, grow desperate, and apply 
Malthusian principles to their thoughts and 
impose barrenness upon themselves to save 
trouble. But that is unnatural. Toil for your 
thought is as sweet as toil for wife or child or 
fatherland. Be careful, however, not to waste 
all your labor. Labor for thought, as for wife 
and children, is very often wildly misapplied 
and lost. The main rules to avoid throwing 
toil away in authorship are very simple. 

First, please yourself. Do not work up 
painfully to a conventional standard, in which 
you can see no comeliness, and do not work 
doggedly and slovenly without any standard 
at all. Have a standard, clearly understood, 
and as high as possible ; but let it be one which 
stirs and attracts you. Work hard ; but work 
so that you can sing at your task and crow a 
little when it is done, not in the vain conceit of 
one who would put " two marks of admiration 
at the end of each line as hieroglyphics of the 
author's admiration of his own cleverness," but 
in the simple, natural delight of one who has 
faithfully exercised a true gift. Let your toil 
and your delight embrace the whole of your 
work, and also be distributed if possible over 



290 Prejudiced Inquiries. 

every part. Be a gentle, devoted lover of 
sentences ; but do not dawdle foolishly with 
them and forget the chapter and the book. If 
the sentences are very refractory, be stern with 
them ; strip them naked of all finery, lest they 
mock your magnificence ; walk firmly on their 
prostrate bodies till you are out of the difficulty. 
But however you fare with the sentence, let the 
whole piece, whatever it be, command your 
respect at least, your love if possible. 

Secondly, — not first, remember, but secondly, 
having pleased yourself, please others. In urg- 
ing you all to become authors, I did not promise 
to find readers for you, and I do not promise 
now. The work is worth doing, readers or no 
readers. But for your own sake, and for the sake 
of your work, you must do it in such a way that, 
if any human beings should chance to light upon 
it, they may smile kindly and own that it was 
not amiss to lift it for a brief moment from 
endless oblivion. Their pleasure need not be 
great ; it need not be nearly as great as yours ; 
but there must be a gentle ripple raised in their 
minds or your work is not done as well as it 
should be. Worthy thoughts are not fittingly 
expressed unless they give pleasure as they 



A uthorship. 291 

enter another mind. Truth may be arrayed 
in splendor or in simplicity ; but to huddle it 
in mean rags that make men turn away from it 
is to wrong its noble nature. 

To secure yourselves on this capital point, 
study the people round about you, and work as 
if for their special benefit. Do not write a line 
for posterity, or for an imaginary public, made 
up of giants eight feet high. Make your own 
home the centre of mankind, and aim at the 
world through your nearest neighbors. But 
they are common people — hopelessly common, 
are they? That is all the better for you. 
Most men are common people. Posterity will 
be common people too. The giants are dead 
and have left no seed. Behind your common- 
place neighbors, stretching out through space 
and time, are the myriads of mankind now 
living and yet to be. If you, with simple, 
honest thought, and without sacrificing your 
own judgment or taste, can gladden and govern, 
for a single hour, the common people at your 
door, I would rather be in your shoes than 
in Robert Browning's. It is well enough to 
be able to entertain and instruct the ac- 
complished few, — to dine late with a picked 



292 Prejudiced Inquiries, 

company, as Landor expected to do. But if you 
can have the same viands, or viands just as 
good, it is surely better to dine at a reasonable 
hour with all the cheery multitude. 

Address your commonest neighbors then ; 
but do not make them commoner than they 
are. Do not address them as Tom, Dick, and 
Harry, — as atoms and fragments. Call them, 
Men, Brethern, and Fathers. Address them as 
Friends, Americans, Countrymen. Do not 
allow the accidental limitations, which make 
them seem paltry, to conceal from you the 
substantial life and august relations which 
make them great, and which would stir the 
prophetic heart of real genius in your com- 
munity as readily as in ancient Rome or 
Jerusalem. 

While striving up to your own ideal with 
perfect freedom, and while addressing the com- 
mon mind and heart of mankind as represented 
in your nearest neighbors, work " as ever in the 
Great Task-Master's eye," who delights in all 
His works, and who is indifferent to no perfec- 
tion or endeavor of man which does not con- 
travene the highest. When we have offered to 
Him first a broken, contrite heart, He will not 



Authorship. 293 

disdain whatever else we may have to bring; 
whether it be the fruit of the ground that we 
have tilled, or the firstlings of the flocks that 
we have tended ; whether it be gold and frank- 
incense and myrrh, or the cherished thoughts 
and ordered speech of a loyal mind. When 
we trust Him entirely, we can not only worship 
and adore, but also do our common work and 
even dance and play, before His face, and lift 
up our whole complex nature to His light. 
Make Him your patron, then, as well as 
your Lord. Spread out all your work, as a 
psalm, before Him— the lightest as well as the 
gravest : and so, without constraint or repres- 
sion, bring a new measure into the multitude 
of your thoughts ; and escape at once from the 
fever of vain ambition and from the defiant 
cheerlessness of self-sufficiency. 



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